20 November 2020

Tour support? Yamaha Tracer 900 fits the bill

Whilst he’s a naturally excitable fella, Paul Browne’s enthusiasm for the newly reworked Yamaha Tracer 900 and its GT sibling, looks well placed. Who’s up for some touring next year?

The people at Yamaha have been busy over the last few weeks, rapidly launching a host of new bikes.

Now the one, or ones to be more accurate, that get most of my attention are the MT 09 derived Tracer 900s. Once again there are two, a standard version and a Grand Tourer or GT.

Faster, lighter, sleeker

The new ‘nine’ is faster and lighter than before, with sleeker bodywork and better-than-before ergonomics.

The Euro 5 compliant 890cc three cylinder block is more than most of us will ever need and dismisses the back roads as easily as it does an autobahn. Reworked to produce more torque, this sits on an all new lightweight aluminium die-cast frame.

The Tracer 900 is now the lightest bike in its class, thanks also to h lighter, spin-forged wheels,the Tracer 900 which are wonderfully complimented by a pair of radial front brake master cylinders

The bike has 350-plus kilometre range in the real world and can take three pieces of luggage. There’s LED lighting all round and all the rider aids that we would expect from a much more expensive machine.

High spec tech

Then there’s the new GT version. This comes with colour-matched panniers that are big enough to carry a full faced helmet and can be complemented with a top box that sits on a floating luggage rack.

There’s no shortage of tech.

The new bike even comes as standard with a quick shifter as well as a six axis IMU, auto blipper and lean-sensitive rider aids such as ABS and traction control.

The ‘clocks’ are now replaced with a full colour 3.5-inch TFT display while illumination is supplied by an all new compact, bifunctional LED headlight.

The whole things looks the business too, Yamaha’s design team was clearly keen to make the new machine stand out.

While nobody likes to predict the future, I’m going to go big here and predict that the new Tracer wll be the one to tour on in 2021.

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