SR400 coming to Europe

YAMAHA has announced that the SR400 – a bike descended directly from the classic SR500 of 1978 – could be sold in Europe in the near future.

We speculated whether there’s a market for the SR400 over here just a few months ago, and it looks like Yamaha has had the same thoughts, saying that it’s investigating the idea and that the machine could be offered here in 2014 if it decides there’s a market for it.

In truth, that on-sale date suggests the decision has probably been made already – the work involved in undergoing EU homologation is likely to be well underway if the bike is to be in dealers as a 2014 model.

Given that there’s a reasonably strong retro bike market, populated by the likes of Triumph’s Bonneville, Kawasaki’s W800 and Honda’s CB1100F, it’s likely that riders falling into the new A2 licence category might want a slice of the action too. The 25bhp Yamaha SR400 could be ideal as a stylish little runaround.

Price-wise, the SR is around £4000 in Japan, although it would no doubt cost a little more once shipped to these shores.

Initially, Yamaha is promising to show a customised SR400 at the EICMA show in Milan, reworked by Danish tuners Wrenchmonkees and German parts maker KEDO as the SR400 “Yard Built” – following on from the similarly-tweaked XJR1300 by Wrenchmonkees that the firm showed last year. A kit to convert production SR400s to a similar spec is also expected to be offered later.