Yamaha FZ16 Midnight Special (image used as an illustration)
Yamaha is a brand which is known worldwide for its high performance bikes and has a wide range of these high performance bikes, but in India, it really is a different story. In India, Yamaha has only a few performance motorcycles on-sale and they have made sure that they are the best. The motorcycles in question are the YZF-R15, the FZ-16, FZ-S and Fazer. Of the four, the Fazer, FZ-16 and FZ-S share the same chassis, same engine, same instrumentation etc. only way they differ is that the Fazer comes with a tank fairing and a larger visor, making it look like a touring motorcycle, the FZ-16 gets only the plain colors, and the FZ-S comes with attractive and vibrant paint and graphics schemes.
These motorcycles have been on-sale in Indian for the past 6 years and during these 6 years, they got a refresh, and many new colors and some special editions too were made. but they never got any sort of mechanical update and in today’s age, the rate at which technology changes is so fast, that to stay in the game, a manufacturer has to keep updating their products every now and then, but Yamaha knew that their products were good enough to keep going and even had evidence in the form of sales numbers to support them and hence they stayed away from updating the FZ series, but now, Yamaha is facing the heat from their arch-rival, Honda, in the form of the Honda CB trigger and has finally taken the decision to update their FZ series.
The FZ has never really been a bad bike to begin with, it looked really good, had a nice smooth engine which can very well be called one of the smoothest 150cc engines out there, and even though it had really wide, super-bike size tires, it handled beautifully. The chassis was so good, that all the people who rode it, felt that it was underpowered and that it could very well handle more power. It wasn’t long, before performance parts came out for the FZ and many even upsized the displacement on the engine to extract more power, and it felt perfect after the increase in power. This exposed a disadvantage in the FZ. It was powered by an air cooled, 153cc, single cylinder engine with a maximum output of 14 PS and 13.6 NM. With a 135 kilos to haul around, this engine felt a little too underpowered to call the FZ a performance bike anymore. The Indian biking scene is now filled with many powerful bikes, and Yamaha has now realized that the FZ needs more power, and will launch the new FZ with a new, more powerful engine.
Yamaha FZ16 Midnight Special (image used as an illustration)
The new FZ series will get a new more powerful oil-cooled engine with revised ignition timing, mated to a new 6-speed transmission, it will also get a revised sprockets. The displacement of the new engine will be in between 150-200cc and all these updates will ensure that the new FZ will perform much better than before. Along with the increase in power, Yamaha will also equip the new FZ with a re-tuned suspension system and a rear disc brake too, to make sure it can handle the power. The current FZ is not a bad looking bike yet, but Yamaha will not take any chances with the new one, and will redesign the headlamp cluster and tail-lamps too. Even the boring fully-digital instrument cluster will get a refresh.
Another weak point in the armour of the FZ was the price, it was not made for the price sensitive Indian customer and as a solution to that, Yamaha might launch more variants of the FZ with varying equipment levels in order to cut-down on the price. Yamaha does not launch new products very often, but whenever they do, it is bound to be a super-hit with the masses, everybody loves Motorcycles from Yamaha. We are not sure of the date on which Yamaha plans to launch the new FZ series, but we will keep you updated.
Also see – Yamaha FZ-16 Midnight Special
Special Edition of Yamaha FZ-S and Fazer launched
Source – MotorBeam
