The 1990s were a time of rapid development for sports motorcycles.
If the 1980s had seen the blueprint of the modern bikes we know today being drawn up, the following decade saw the concepts refined and developed in the white hot cauldron of international superbike racing.
The start of the Superbike World Championship in 1988 brought with it a number of super trick superbikes designed to win trophies in the highly competitive new class. Ducati launched the 851, the model that would evolve into the extremely successful 888 and 916, while Honda produced the iconic VFR750R, aka the RC30.
Yamaha was a year late to the party, launching its homologation special – the OW01 – in 1989. The OW01 was designed purely to race, and enjoyed reasonable success, but when it came to producing a replacement for that, and the long in the tooth FZ750 road bike, Yamaha went down the mass market route.
Released in 1993, the YZF750R was a road bike first and foremost. Because world superbikes had to be homologated, in other words mass produced and made available for sale, a run of Sports Production models, called the YZF750SP, with some different parts that made it better as a base for a racer, at the expense of road bike manners. These included a close ratio gearbox, with a tall first gear, and flat slide carburettors, which gave top end gains while sacrificing low speed manners.
The R was the cooking version and one of the finest sportsbikes of the 1990s, even if it spent its life in the shadows of others. In world superbikes the YZF750 (along with every other 750cc four) spent its life chasing the dominant Ducatis, but in the UK it was the bike to beat in British superbikes. Niall Mackenzie won the reborn series in 1996, ’97 and ’98 on his purple, Cadbury’s Boost-backed, YZF750SP, giving it a special place in the affections of British riders – while Japanese legend Noriyuki Haga won the hearts of race fans around the globe in 1998, when he earned his nickname ‘The Samurai of Slide’ with some sensational winning performances on his Yamaha in the 1998 world series. Haga and Colin Edwards also won the 1996 Suzuka 8-hour on a factory YZF, giving it legendary status by winning the world’s most prestigious endurance race.
In the showrooms it was the Honda FireBlade that stole Yamaha’s thunder. The CBR900RR was never built to race and benefited from an additional 150cc over the competition, which were limited to 750cc in order to be eligible to compete in racing. The ‘Blade arrived in 1992, a year before the Yamaha, and was an instant legend – hoovering up sales and magazine group test accolades.
None of that should detract from the fact that the YZF750 deserves iconic status in its own right. Unlike the Ducati 916 and Honda RC45 against which it competed on track, the Yam was a bike of the people. With a claimed 125bhp, on tap it was more powerful than anything else in the class – including the aforementioned Ducati and FireBlade – when it was launched. Yamaha’s then traditional 20-valve engine was peakier than those competitors, although the famous EXUP valve in the exhaust went some way to improve power delivery. Some of the early colour schemes were, shall we say, of their time – especially the many pink and purple hues – but later ones in particular were classier with their world superbike inspired liveries.
In many ways the YZF750 was the right bike at the wrong time. It was the best every day 750cc sportsbike of the 1990s but, unfortunately for Yamaha, the world moved on during its time, as 1000cc V-twins dominated racing and the FireBlade changed the public perception of what riders wanted from a larger capacity sportsbike.
It’s hard to believe that these are 25 years old now, and they make cracking second hand values on the emerging classics scene with good, usable examples available from as little as £2000.
The YZF750 was dropped in 1998, as Yamaha took a two pronged attack on the sportsbike market. For street riders, the YZF-R1 went head-to-head with the FireBlade, pumping out a 150bhp from a full litre engine in a chassis lighter and more compact than the 750’s. For the race track, the limited edition YZF-R7 (OW-02) was introduced and, despite being super-trick it was unable to stop the domination of the V-twins.
And while the Ducati 916 and Honda FireBlade are (quite rightly) held up as the sportsbike icons of the ‘90s, bikes like the YZF (not to mention the Kawasaki ZX-7R and the Suzuki GSX-R750 SRAD) remain everyday heroes deserving of classic bike status.
