big bore thumpers and the big 3

[fishy_inn]

Why was honda the only one to get into the big bore four stroke sport trike lineup? Were there any prototypes being made? And how come Suzuki didn't get into the sport trike deal altogether? Were they focussing on there quad line up?

[timex69]

suzuki didnt even get into the racers..honda has the 250R, yamaha has the triz and kawasaki has the tacate...suzuki dont have nothing

[bigred110]

Suzuki seemed like that they got late into the game. So they made a few trikes and made more of a effort on trying make quads. Since trikes wasn't going to be legal any more.

[Yamahammer490]

I don't know about prototypes under development, but I think high performance thumpers from Yamaha and Kawasaki would have been pretty unlikely. Back then 4 strokes were considered sluggish and underpowered by everybody except Honda. All of the development in high performance by everybody but Honda was in 2 strokes.

The 350X was derived from the XR line which was Honda's enduro/cross country racing line. Yamaha's analog was the IT line (all 2 strokes) while Kawasaki's was the KDX line, again all 2 strokes.

I guess to make my long hypothesis shorter, since the other manufacturers didn't have a developed engine that could be adapted for a trike it was probably pretty unlikely that they would design an entirely new platform to compete with the 350X.

If Oldfart is listening perhaps he can shed more light or prove me wrong, but I never heard of any prototypes or plans for sporty thumpers.