The creation of the Yamaha Racing Heritage Club was announced at EICMA in 2021 and the Sunday Ride Classic will be the first and only event in France to host this structure in 2022.
To know a little (much) more than the official press release released last November, we collected the comments ofEric de Seynes, at the origin of this initiative which initially concerns owners of competition Yamaha, but ultimately also all enthusiasts who ride motorcycles from the brand of a certain age...
Eric, can you explain to us the genesis of the Yamaha Racing Heritage Club?
Eric de Seynes : “You perhaps remember that in the years 2011-2012 we launched the Yamaha Classic Service with Yamaha France, because I found it important that this whole generation of mechanics and technicians who still knew these motorcycles from the 60s and 70, before they retire and their knowledge disappears, can make an effort to pass it on. At the time, we had approximately between 35 and 40 dealers who had played the Yamaha Classic Service game, and who had joined this network to better serve customers, collectors or not. So we managed to build momentum around that and we restored quite a few motorcycles to try to learn and have a base and a database of quality adaptable parts when the parts no longer existed originally, and sometimes even being able to restart the manufacturing of certain original parts when there was sufficient volume.
So we did that, but when I left for Yamaha Europe, unfortunately it fell off a bit, because you have to take care of it and love it. So when I arrived in Europe, I let a little time pass to rough up the projects and when I tried to restart this content, we started by setting up what we called the conservatory.
Concretely, I recovered motorcycles which were gathering dust in all the European subsidiaries and which nevertheless had an interesting historical past, and we therefore reconstituted at Yamaha Motor Europe a conservatory of both production motorcycles and motorcycles. competition. Today, we have around 120 production motorcycles which are all in impeccable condition. I became attached to all the motorcycles that Yamaha Motor Europe distributed. Yamaha Europe was established in 1968 but in Europe the first importers started working from 1964, so we have machines which start from 1964. We have therefore attached ourselves to the memory in Europe by covering 60 years of existence, and what's interesting is that I really use it as an educational tool for our Engineers and our designers, because at times you realize that they have no idea of what we have done before ! So we show them that on a DTF, a so-called all-terrain motorcycle, the saddle height is between 70 and 80 centimeters and it's a big bike that handles very well, so yes, you can do a trail without however, have a saddle height of 85 cm. It shows that there were ingenious solutions, that there was an evolution and attempts in terms of design. For them, it's interesting to see side by side the roundness of the AT2 and all at once the rectangular shapes that we tried with the XS 360, 400, 500 from 77 and 78 before returning to more conventional with the Diversion. I find it good to be a brand that is alive and that positions itself through a lineage that makes sense.
So we started with that, and on the other side we have a room where we have competition motorcycles. There, it's less exhaustive because it's more what remained in the back rooms. So we have Superbike motorcycles, we obviously have the Dakar motorcycles that we kept at Yamaha Motor France and almost all the factory motocross motorcycles from the Rinaldi-Everts era. So we don't have everything, far from it, but we have traces, and on this basis, I challenged Paolo Pavesio, who takes care of marketing and competition for us, by saying “we knew how to do the Yamaha Classic Service when we were in France, all alone with our little hands, so we have to take better care of our customers, and in particular all those who run the clubs”. XT clubs, Tmax clubs, XJ clubs… there are plenty of clubs all over Europe, and we therefore have thousands of members of these clubs! So the ultimate vocation would be to ensure that we can better unite, animate and support the existence of these enthusiast clubs. For them, we respect the way in which our customers can maintain their passion for motorcycling, through our motorcycles even if they are of a certain age. And so, we have to be able to encourage and nourish them, and ensure that they feel supported by the brand and not ignored by the brand of their passion. This is the ultimate goal!
To start with something, we started with competition motorcycles, where we perhaps have the most ultras! So for the moment, the aim of the Yamaha Racing Heritage Club is to already take the entire generation of TZs and 2-stroke racing motorcycles, to which we can add a little OW01, a little R7, etc. , and in motocross let's start by bringing together all those who practice and who have motorcycles from that era.
– One, let’s start identifying them: where are they in Europe? Who they are ? What do they own?
– Secondly, let's give the ability to be able to certify the integrity of these motorcycles, because unfortunately they are starting to have values that are becoming more and more expensive, and therefore it is a way of protecting both the owners who have done a good restoration and potential buyers that the motorcycle they are purchasing is in integrity. There is someone who can tell them “yes, it’s honest” , so there is a form of certification or in any case support in restoration work to make the motorcycle as clean as possible.
– Thirdly, there is the vocation of bringing together these practitioners, these club members, at events where we can meet and where, gradually, we will deploy reception structures. There, as it's the first year, we're stammering because we don't know if there will be 10, if there will be 50 or if there will be 500! So for the moment we are trying to learn. The first was in Varano in Italy and we are going to have the first in France with the Sunday Ride Classic. We do one in England at Donington and one in Germany at Sachsenring (see dates here), so we are really trying to create a European program to try to bring together all these practitioners or these owners who sometimes felt ignored and who were not in contact with each other.
– The fourth lever is that depending on the information that we will now have live from this community, whether it is necessary to pool together to relaunch the manufacturing of parts such as TZ 350 casings that we cannot find no longer when we realize that we have 140 motorcycles running in Europe, and that if we launch a production of 10 or 20 parts that is of interest and we can pool, because we, Yamaha, can manage to recover the molds, we have the original plans, and if that allows us to redo the part with complete integrity, we will do it! The idea is really to have a community that is much more in contact with the brand, to see how far the brand can support this community in the exercise of its passion. That's the goal: there's no money, it's not marketing, it's just
» let's keep it alive and keep the flame alive! “ . And for people to keep the flame alive, they need to be able to continue riding with their machines, so let's make sure that the practice is made easier.
For the moment, we are starting with the competition angle, and if it works well in two or three years, we will be able to gradually extend to road motorcycle clubs and continue to deploy this approach for the benefit of the owners of our motorcycles. »
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