Quote Originally Posted by opas ride View Post
I don't think that Yamaha is trying to compete with the Goldwing or BMW at all...The market for large touring rigs these days seems to dominated by big air-cooled V-Twins with belt drive...Indian, Victory, (before its demise), Harley and other model Yamaha's all fall in that category and they sell very well....The GW and F6B are in a market by themselves for those of us that prefer smoothness and power with shaft drives, etc. Look at the sales numbers for Touring rigs in the US market and one will see it is clearly filled will air-cooled, V-twin bikes for the most part....Hope Honda does something soon with the GW, F6B, and other touring/bagger type bikes......The price on the new Yammie is way to high for me and the thing weighs almost 1/2 a ton!!!!....Ride safe
Huh? Victory is no more, at least in part to declining sales, and Harley is also seeing declining sales in everything but their T-shirts!

I think this thing was in dev at Yamaha well before the recent decline, and no one had enough balls to pull the plug.