10th place: Yamaha XT 500

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10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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10th place: Yamaha XT 500

10th place: Yamaha XT 500

10th place: Yamaha XT 500

10th place: Yamaha XT 500

7th photos

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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The last one, built in 1990, offered black paint, a silver-coated torso engine, polished hubs and twelve-volt electronics

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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The "Exhaust curve" was compulsory in Germany. Why? Well, at that time, huge baking tray plates were issued by some counties …

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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In 10th place in the 2014 dream bike poll: Yamaha XT 500

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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In 10th place in the 2014 dream bike poll: Yamaha XT 500.

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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Turning out the candle took what felt like three seconds, because everything on the XT 500 is easily accessible.

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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Has anyone ever wondered how much attention was paid to the design of turn signal switches back then?

10th place: Yamaha XT 500
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The "Porthole", The legends around it showed the piston level

Yamaha XT 500

Dream bike election 2014: 10th place

It wasn’t always easy to bring them to life. She had her quirks, some even ascribed the Japanese single to be stubborn and independent. Nevertheless, or maybe because of it, we have taken the Yamaha XT 500 into our hearts forever.

How does it come that you hold something in your heart forever? Mostly because this something goes through thick and thin with you and you can always rely on this something. This can be a life partner, a tool – or, as in this case, the Yamaha XT 500.

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10th place: Yamaha XT 500

Yamaha XT 500
Dream bike election 2014: 10th place

The Yamaha XT 500 is no longer a normal motorcycle. She is a legend. An artifact that is sometimes outweighed by gold. For early models, which were also available in Germany from 1977 for around 5,000 marks, you pay almost the same amount nowadays. Only in euros. And then the engines sometimes have mileage in excess of 30,000. Copies of the original XT from 1976, the ones with the exhaust system below, are rarer than diamonds and almost as expensive. A rational person cannot avoid the following question: Objectively speaking, the XT is and was a cucumber, why is it still traded like Edward Snowden’s revelations?

"Once upon a time there was a man who stepped on the kickstarter…"

You had to look for the measly six-volt spark in the dark, the engine vibrated and often only started when it wanted to. The only thing you could rely on about the brakes on the Yamaha XT 500 was that they were on board at all. A reassuring feeling when you had to go to the TÜV. Unfortunately we forgot all of that. As always, when we dig into the past, we only come across the good memories. And of course that’s a good thing, because it protects against a bad mood.

When ten 50-year-old motorcyclists sit at the table today, there are at least two who have ridden an XT briefly, four of whom have even raced one, but everyone knows the model. And maybe even the sentence with which the first XT 500 test began in MOTORRAD 15/1977: “Once upon a time there was a man who stepped on the Kickstarter – and flew onto the balcony on the first floor.” Written by Paul Simsa, who went hard with the 500: too little flywheel mass, measly top speed, no sound, unstable straight-line stability, insufficient tank volume. At the end of the test, he asked the manufacturer for an XT 500 with road tires, narrower handlebars and a larger tank. His conclusion: the Yamaha XT 500 is a short-haul machine.

Unfortunately, we don’t know today what Simsa might have been thinking five years later. Because Yamaha fulfilled his wish back in 1978 and brought the roadworthy sister model SR 500. In addition, at the beginning of the 1980s, completely overloaded Yamaha XT 500s were spotted even in the most remote corners of the world. Either the guys had installed huge tanks or they simply had a spare canister with them.

And even today – so the story goes – people in inaccessible jungle beetles refer to every motorcycle they come across as an XT. The two letters are the epitome of the motorcycle around the world.

Short haul machine? More like a world motorhome!

Because the 500, which was incorrectly identified as a short-haul machine, turned out to be the world travel vehicle. No way was too difficult for her, no destination too far. Equipped with huge tanks and self-made case systems, she dragged her drivers around the globe. Partly over slopes that don’t even deserve the name donkey path. The pilots simply didn’t care if their darling lost one or every comparison test and came under criticism because of a slow delay or poor light. Ask all world travelers and listen to their stories: There is no gasoline fairytale from which the mobile vibrator with emergency lighting does not emerge as a hero. Either technical problems that occurred on the way could be resolved with a hammer and screwdriver, or none at all appeared.

But how can it come about that an objectively bad motorcycle like the Yamaha XT 500 becomes a style icon and legend? It’s the Frankenstein daughter effect. We remember: The original Kawasaki Z 900 – also known as “Frankenstein’s daughter” among freaks – married a 79-hp monster engine with a frame made of better water pipes. From 120 km / h the combo wobbled like an earthquake with a magnitude of 15. A clear message: Anyone who can drive this thing has balls in their pants. No matter if woman or man. It ennobles in a sense. This is how you can distinguish yourself.

Something similar can also be reported about the XT 500, which could kick back badly with its Kickstarter if used improperly and sometimes broke shins like pretzel sticks. The reason was usually an incorrectly set or misaligned ignition, because of course contacts were still used. For the freaks among the XT riders, the starting process had become second nature, they felt from the resistance transmitted by the kick starter which position the piston was in – and whether the Yamaha XT 500 would start.

Everyone else relied on the legendary porthole, a small sight glass next to the camshaft, in which a light sheet of metal signaled whether the piston was correctly positioned for kicking. Who doesn’t know the saying when it was pitch dark again: “Hey, do you have a light? I have to see if it starts. ”In view of this hurdle, it is difficult to explain why Yamaha produced a total of 127,446 copies of the Yamaha XT 500 between 1976 and 1990 and sold them to men and women worldwide. The German importer sold 24,718 pieces in this country alone.

Another piece of the puzzle in the success story was sports. Crossers with an XT 500 engine were the first four-stroke vehicles in the starting field dominated by two-stroke engines. The hammering sound echoed in people’s ears for weeks. Even when the Paris – Dakar Rally was celebrated as the craziest adventure of motorcycling mankind at the end of the 1970s, over half of the adventurers put their faith in the Yamaha XT 500. And saw the checkered flag.

Through thick and thin

That brings us back to the beginning of this story. The Yamaha XT 500 may have its weaknesses, certainly, but it goes through thick and thin with you. You could always rely on them. And it is precisely their purism in connection with our memories in today’s time for wistful glances back into their own youth, when the XT became a symbol for becoming a man.

How was that? A real guy must have planted a tree, fathered a child and raced a Yamaha XT 500. It was always a motorcycle that you had to and could prove yourself with. When traveling, racing or simply kicking off. Today we look back sadly when we start again at the push of a button, step onto plush benches or hide behind huge panels. We look back like all the many readers who voted the XT 500 out of 100 motorcycles in tenth place. And who might now be wondering why Yamaha isn’t releasing the XT. With a two-liter larger tank, better brakes, stable chassis and kick starter!

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