Yamaha Niken three-wheeled motorcycle is amazingly planned for production
We wouldn't believe it if we hadn't read it with our own eyes, but Yamaha says it's going to put a three-wheeled leaning motorcycle called the Niken into production. The oddball beast debuted at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, and while it's not the first leaning three-wheeler we've ever seen – the Piaggio MP3 immediately comes to mind – it's definitely the most surprising.
We're woefully short on details, other than the fact that the Niken sports a 900cc three-cylinder engine and is about 7 feet long and 3 feet wide. The two wheels up front are 15-inch units, making them a couple inches smaller than typical sportbike wheels, and they are propped up by twin dual-tube fork units. And did we mention it leans into corners like a traditional two-wheeler?
Yamaha cites "a high feeling of stability when cornering" as the main benefit of a second wheel up front, which makes sense considering there's an extra contact patch on the ground. How well it works in practice is something we're keenly interesting in finding out. Stay tuned for more on the Niken in the coming months, and in the meantime, check out the image gallery above and the oddly dressed rider in the video below.
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Yamaha Niken three-wheeled motorcycle is amazingly planned for production originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:15:00 EDT.
