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Jahn
motorcycles
At home: everywhere
At home: everywhere
25 years of Yamaha Tenere
The Yamaha Tenere appeared 25 years ago. For me the whole world became a village and the village became the whole world.
Michael Orth
07/17/2008
The world stands in a barn in the village, it stands tightly packed and neatly lined up. Mainly it is red and white or blue and yellow. Sometimes it has quirks and bumps, oils a little here and there, but that’s not a problem. On the contrary: it is what makes them so attractive. The barn belongs to Wolfram Ettgen’s house. He lives, as he says, in the “German outback”, and that’s where he is at home. Although: not quite. Because somehow he’s at home everywhere, just like the many Teneres who are standing there in his barn and who, if you will, mean the world to him. “Every Tenere that I find, that finds me, brings me something of a journey that I haven’t been able to make myself. They fill the blank spaces on my map”, says Wolfram Ettgen. Whether he really knows where the machines have been does not matter. What is more important is that he can imagine where they could have been. “Of course, it’s just a matter of the head, that’s clear.”
It was a matter of the head with the Tenere from the start. Very few who drove one should have seriously considered leaving the asphalted Europe. But everyone relied on being able to do it anytime. They wanted to believe this promise that this motorcycle stood and stands for, a promise that may turn the trip to the cigarette machine into an adventurous journey. And which Tenere makes a symbol in a complex everyday world with additional dental insurance. For defying real, existential challenges with it and always being able to get away. The only thing that was bigger than the superstructure of the Tenere was its tank. The reason for this lies in Africa, it lies in the desert that gave the motorcycle its name: Tenere. Freely translated that means “Country out there”, and this land is a particularly nasty piece of the Sahara. Hot, stony, impassable, criss-crossed by dunes ?? and part of the Paris-Dakar rally. In 1983 a 600 cc single cylinder prepared by the then French Yamaha importer Sonauto reached Dakar. Your driver Serge Bacou didn’t come out as the winner, he finished fifth. The decisive factor, however, was that he was sitting on a machine that was available almost exactly like that in the store shortly afterwards. The fork of the first model, the 34L, was a bit slimmer in the series, and the tank volume of 30 was a few liters less. Does not matter. Since then, the calling card of the toughest rally in the world has stuck to every single Tenere. And with it the beautiful belief that no matter what goal could be achieved with it.
Jahn
Ready to go
At the beginning of the 1980s Wolfram Ettgen was looking for such a motorcycle, one with which he would be able to circumnavigate the world. “There wasn’t any. Until the Tenere came.” And when she came he didn’t have 6,665 marks left. So in 1984 he bought last year’s model second-hand, from a short-legged woman who couldn’t handle the 90 centimeter seat height. “The world I wanted to see brought me to Tenere, and its reliability has always kept me clinging to it”, says Wolfram Ettgen and speaks of one “Key experience”. While describing his first trip through Africa, words like greenhorn, water canister, 46-liter tank, replacement hoses, tools, aluminum boxes are mentioned. And: Socialists with a preference for collecting fossils. the Yamaha bore and endured all this in desolate temperatures through deep sand. “She was totally overloaded. But the machine made it without breaking apart. An emotional bond grows there.” This bond, that is to be heard from the man, still exists today. Maybe that’s because he had to sell this first one. Maybe also because his second never let him down either. Although it’s a 1VJ.
Self-discovery and machine loyalty
Jahn
The owner with his treasures.
Again the model, presented in 1986, looked damned like a rally, the crossing of boundaries and sand in the auricles. As she stood, the second version also told this story. The stories that circulated about them shortly afterwards were less about distant lands. Because the engine now ?? Yamaha had changed the location of the air filter box? inhaling his waste heat, they oscillated between pity and horror: overheating, piston jamming, torn off studs.
The anecdote told by Wolfram Ettgen does without it. It begins with the fact that after six months on the construction site he has enough money to set off for Anatolia with the new machine. There, however, the budget is running out. And that was good. Because he has to save, especially fuel. With every kilometer more, the necessity becomes an enrichment. “I drove slowly, a maximum of 80. But the machine allowed that, and it taught you to do that.” It sounds as if it was that reserved way you had to drive it to understand the second Tenere. And even: to understand yourself better. “It was a calming drive and a relaxed journey. Almost had something meditative, philosophical about it.” What more could you want: the motorcycle as a teacher of restraint and serenity. Nevertheless, says Wolfram Ettgen, who, with the exception of the water-cooled single cylinder, owns everything that was ever called Tenere: “It is difficult to explain why. And why there were so many.” That’s a lie. Because before he had said it was nice “imagine the adventures in all of these machines”. Which is why he doesn’t care about originality and prefers the authentic. The specimens he succumbs to are allowed to be a bit battered, dented and scratched, somewhere in the world they have fallen into the gravel. The main thing was that they would be up and running again with just a little bit of work done. The main thing is that they can travel again.
Like the English machine, which is first in row two. Leaning against the neighbor, a piece of kitchen roll cushions the contact between the preserved tanks. She has collected 67,307 kilometers, and the boarding pass for the last passage on the ship is still hanging on her aluminum handlebar. As a number “106” she went from the island. It also decorates the floor with a dark spot, and who knows where it hasn’t already left a few drops everywhere. In the next row, a French specimen tells of the hardships it suffered over a distance of 44,228 kilometers. Or 144228? At some point it was necessary to attach the rear indicators to the luggage rack with wire, and that must have been due to the fact that in the event of a fall in Burundi … Or in Burgundy? One of these machines must have been there once. And it doesn’t really matter which one it was. It is also irrelevant how many Teneres are actually in this barn. There are not as many as the earth has countries. But they bring the whole world together.
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