Yamaha is indulging more and more the pleasures of bike concepts. The echoes of the very uncanny Root design haven’t died down completely but the house of Iwata is already showing off two new ideas. The two new rides are derived from the 01GEN three-wheeled scooter concept introduced last fall, and the new 03GEN units seem to follow the same recipe as Husqvarna’s Vitpilen and Svartpilen machinery: one scoot for the road and one for dirt scrambling.
Both designs are based on the leaning front wheel architecture of the Yamaha Tricity scooter, but the suspensions and the wheels make a huge difference. The 03GEN-f is a party-faired concept and is destined for road use exclusively, being a city and highway machine. The X-suffix of its sibling 03GEN-x leaves no room for mistakes – dirt is its primordial element and it is engineered for slicing mud.
How long until we see GEN machines in the dealership?
These two scooter concepts may seem overly futuristic to some but seeing such three-wheelers roll down the street is not that far of a future. Like always, Yamaha has not made any mention as to if and when such scooters could become production models, but we can presume that Iwata has serious plans in this direction.
Maybe Yamaha will not be as fast as Husky, announcing production for bikes derived from concepts freshly unveiled months before, but there’s definitely brewing up. Fact is that the 03GEN are already on display at the Bangkok International Motor Show in Thailand these days and Yamaha promises they will appear in all the major shows.
03GEN-f stands for “future racing”, 03GEN-x for “cross”
The “faired” version looks like still far from a potential production phase, with the body panels possibly in need of more “real-world design” refinement, but the 03GEN-x seems almost ready to roll, most likely because it shows like being put together with Tricity parts.
Some may have been expecting to see Yamaha delivering electric concepts, but it’s exactly the fact that the 03GEN machines seem to sport the same swingarm-engine unit which makes us think we’re not going to wait for too long until Tricity has real-life siblings.
The production models may ditch the LED X headlight and wood/brass accents of the 03GEN-x, while the 03GEN-f could use a more conservative and practical approach to bodywork design, of course. Still, these two may be closer to mass production than we’d anticipate.
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