Friday bike

This week's Friday Bike is a 'near cousin' of the Skorpion, Yamaha's SZR 660.

This was built by Yamaha in their plant in Italy and was (as far as I know) only sold in Europe and Australia. Basically, Yamaha took the engine from an XTZ660 (as used in the Skorpion).

And fitted it into the frame and cycle parts from a TZR 250.

In theory, this should make a very useful bike – light, good handling frame mated to a punchy, if not very powerful engine. However, it was very expensive at the time (cost more in the UK than a Suzuki 1200 Bandit), so very few were sold. In the UK it was only available for a few years (1996 – 2001), and I've only seen two or three examples.

However, that might change soon................