The Sport Heritage Yamaha XSR700 is Coming to the U.S.

Yamaha Motorsports is continuing a sort of renaissance with its motorcycle lineup. Earlier this year, the brand announced the all-new Venture and Eluder touring bikes and last year Yamaha came out with the outstanding XSR900. The XSR900 is what Yamaha calls a "sport heritage" bike and it won our hearts when it came out last year. Now its little sibling is coming to the United States.

The all-new for the U.S. Yamaha XSR700 takes the same magic of the XSR900 and puts it in a smaller package. It has a bit of an old-school aesthetic while looking decidedly modern not unlike the Ducati Scrambler and the Triumph Street Twin the bike is not-so-subtly competing with.

Along with smaller displacement, the XSR700 drops a cylinder from the triple on the XSR900. The 700 is powered by a 689cc fuel-injected, liquid-cooled, DOHC, eight-valve inline twin linked to a six-speed manual transmission. This engine, which makes 50 ft-lbs of torque, is shared with the more futuristic FZ-07 naked bike. It has a wet weight of just 410 lbs which should make this an even more nimble, tossable bike than its 900cc counterpart. The XSR700 will also be outfitted with the increasingly common feature of standard ABS.

The XSR900 was an improvement on the FZ-09 it’s based on and we’re really hoping for the same result from the XSR700. It will already be available this October and pricing starts at a reasonable $8,499.

Here’s a weird little movie from Yamaha about a man who is so upset about his dad offering him a job that he restores his old bike for him. Apparently, it's supposed to be about the new bike.