ambassadors
Due to the development of internal combustion engines and increasing power demand the beggining of the 70's there were no big single cylinder motors in the motorcycle market.
World leading japanese manufacturers produced engines with minimum of two cylinders. The need of a simple, but powerful and torquey motor had been growing.
Yamaha recognized an opportunity to enter this market, and launched the new engine project development. They even bought the crossbike Eso from Czech Rebublic for research purposes! The Czech company was founded in 1949 by a professional motoracer Jaroslav Simandl, and it produced speedway and motocross racing motorcycles with engines up to 500 cc.
Of course, Yamaha improved the engine: they added the overhead cams and five-speed gearbox, made cylinder from aluminum, did lubrication system with dry sump. The bike turned out great! It weighted only 140 kg with power of 30 HP.
These bike characteristics made it popular in rally-marathons since other four-stroke models were either heavy or not powerful enough, and two-stroke bikes were not suitable for long-distance races due to low fuel efficiency.
This story shows the performance of one-cylinder engine bike. French racer Thierry Sabine got lost with his XT500 in the sands of Libya during the passage of the rally Paris – Abidjan – Nice. He wandered in the desert for two days, until he was picked up half-dead by nomads. But the desert had impressed him so much he decided to show these landscapes to as many people as he could. That is how the idea of the rally Paris-Dakar was born.
28 December 1978 was the start of the first Paris-Dakar race in history. There were 92 cars and 90 motorcycles at the start. The first ever Dakar winner was French trial motoracer Cyril Neveu. Next year he repeated his success at Paris-Dakar.
In 1977, the 1-cylinder motor became the heart of the bike – SR500. The motorcycle was styled similar to English bikes from the 60's which became quite popular in Japan. The next version, SR500 was on stock until 1999 and in 2010 the SR400 version was released. Both of these models became iconic for customizers.
