Photo: Classified Moto
Back in the decade before most of us today's adults were born, Japanese bike maker Yamaha made a motorcycle family called XS750. It was a three-cylinder breed of bikes meant to be unimpressive but effective in getting its users to where they needed to be, and it is perhaps because of that it's still an appreciated ride in some circles.
Every now and then a custom garage somewhere gets hold of an XS750 and starts tampering with it. By somewhere, I mostly mean the whole world minus the U.S., where garages have a soft spot for an entirely different kind of custom ride.
Believe it or not, though, this modified XS750 was indeed made in the U.S., in the hands of a Virginia-based crew that goes by the name Classified Moto. And it's so extreme that even its name morphed into something else entirely: Yamasaki.
And no, that's not a nod to Honda Aircraft CEO Hideto Yamasaki, but the result of combining the base 1978 Yamaha XS750 with parts taken off a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R originally produced in 2005.
That's a breed of street-track machines still being made by Kawasaki today, and selling new from $11,399. We are not sure what state the 2005 example was in, or what happened to the rest of it after its face was transplanted onto the bike made by the rivals from Yamaha.
More to the point, the custom bike's front end, meaning the wheel and brakes, come from that 2005 Kawasaki, while everything else is still Yamaha. Still Yamaha, but not always still XS750, because the rear wheel, for instance, comes from a Yamaha XS850.
The bike was stripped down to the skeleton for the purposes of this build, with no unnecessary body panel covering the stock engine and the slightly modified exhaust system (now three-into-one). The engine sends its power to the ground by means of Kenda rubber front and Bridgestone rubber rear.
That's the (short) story of how the Yamasaki came to be, but the story of how the motorcycle got to where it is kind of feels special as well. We're told the bike crossed paths with Classified Moto after spending a lot of time in someone's living room, just waiting to be transformed becaue the mechanic who worked on it went to jail. When it was discovered the Yamaha had seized carbs, a charging system that did not work, and stuck brakes.
All of that was, of course, taken care of, at the end of a customization process that costs at least $21,000 (that's the usual price the garage charges for such a conversion). At the time of writing, the bike is listed by the garage as a special project, thus not for sale.
Believe it or not, though, this modified XS750 was indeed made in the U.S., in the hands of a Virginia-based crew that goes by the name Classified Moto. And it's so extreme that even its name morphed into something else entirely: Yamasaki.
And no, that's not a nod to Honda Aircraft CEO Hideto Yamasaki, but the result of combining the base 1978 Yamaha XS750 with parts taken off a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R originally produced in 2005.
That's a breed of street-track machines still being made by Kawasaki today, and selling new from $11,399. We are not sure what state the 2005 example was in, or what happened to the rest of it after its face was transplanted onto the bike made by the rivals from Yamaha.
More to the point, the custom bike's front end, meaning the wheel and brakes, come from that 2005 Kawasaki, while everything else is still Yamaha. Still Yamaha, but not always still XS750, because the rear wheel, for instance, comes from a Yamaha XS850.
The bike was stripped down to the skeleton for the purposes of this build, with no unnecessary body panel covering the stock engine and the slightly modified exhaust system (now three-into-one). The engine sends its power to the ground by means of Kenda rubber front and Bridgestone rubber rear.
That's the (short) story of how the Yamasaki came to be, but the story of how the motorcycle got to where it is kind of feels special as well. We're told the bike crossed paths with Classified Moto after spending a lot of time in someone's living room, just waiting to be transformed becaue the mechanic who worked on it went to jail. When it was discovered the Yamaha had seized carbs, a charging system that did not work, and stuck brakes.
All of that was, of course, taken care of, at the end of a customization process that costs at least $21,000 (that's the usual price the garage charges for such a conversion). At the time of writing, the bike is listed by the garage as a special project, thus not for sale.
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