Just when you thought that middleweight sports bikes were a thing of the past, Yamaha has leaned heavily into the genre. They have provided us with not one, but two of them to temp us. These bikes in question are the YZF-R7 and its larger sibling the YZF-R9. However, this does beg the question … which one of these little beauties should you pick and why?
Before we start, we’d like to give a special shout-out to Yamaha Canada for loaning us both of these bikes. Without their support, this head-to-head review simply would not have been possible.
- Introduction :
The purpose of this review is to directly compare the YZF-R7 with the YZF-R9. We’re going to look at the relative merits of each bike. This goal is to provide you with everything that you need to make a decision as to which one of these bikes may be right for you.
On the face of it, both of these Yamaha R models may seem just a little too close in their market positions. To the uninitiated, it could almost appear that Yamaha might be competing with themselves for the mindshare of potential buyers.
Not only does this increase the complexity of the buying decision for customers, it could actually result in lost sales for Yamaha. That’s certainly the perspective that some industry commentators have taken. Whilst that view may be valid - at least to some degree - its also naive and ill-informed