Tokyo

Sports Ride is Yamaha's awesome, lightweight coupe concept

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Typically, when we think Yamaha, we think motorcycles or powersports stuff. (Or music – your author's first drum kit was made by Yamaha.) But now, we're thinking cars, because Yamaha brought a really enticing coupe concept to this year's Tokyo Motor Show.

We don't know much about the Sports Ride concept you see here, except that it's super lightweight. It's about as big as a Mazda MX-5 Miata, but only weighs 1,650 pounds. Peering inside the concept, we can see a stripped-out interior that's similar to a Lotus or even an Alfa Romeo 4C. Hopefully that's indicative of how this thing will drive, should it ever be built. Imagine one of these with a little turbo engine, or a reworked version of one of Yamaha's motorcycle mills.

The Sports Ride's design was all done in-house, but if you think it looks like a downsized supercar, you're not alone. That's alright, though. It looks killer in person, and all we can say is: build it.

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SPORTS RIDE CONCEPT

This design concept mode takes a uniquely Yamaha approach by putting the involved and active feeling of riding a motorcycle, or "Live and Ride," into a vehicle with quintessential sports car proportions that adults can enjoy in daily use. Like the MOTIV (displayed at the 43rd Tokyo Motor Show 2013), it employs the iStream* process and is designed to express a driver-machine relationship close in feeling to the world of motorcycle riding. We devoted much attention to the high-quality details and were inspired by the artistic style of Elementarism in designing this proposal for a sports car.

Length×Width×Height: 3,900 mm×1,720 mm×1,170 mm
Vehicle weight: 750 kg
Seating capacity: 2

iStream: A process developed by Gordon Murray Design Limited to produce lightweight, high-rigidity vehicle structures rooted in Formula One technology

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