The brightest minds at Yamaha don’t always get the credit they deserve when they come up with some pretty radical car engines over the years. A good chunk of it was built for and in collaboration with Toyota, including the 2ZZ-GE, the 3S-GE and the 4.8-liter stratospheric rotating V10 in the Lexus LFAHowever, the company has also contributed to vehicles from other brands.
Expect this to continue in the electric age, as Yamaha just did announced A new compact electric motor with 350 kW (469 PS), which was specially developed for “Hyper-EVs”. The space-conscious packaging makes it ideal for multi-engine applications in high-performance cars. According to Yamaha, the compact design could be achieved by combining the inverter and gearbox in one unit.
This engine is not something Yamaha only has in mind for vehicles you can never afford. The company has also been commissioned – since last year – to develop lower-power hardware for more modest electric vehicles. So, yes, Yamaha is still doing what it does best.
That’s all well and good, but I think Yamaha has let other brands steal the awards for far too long. Instead, it was supposed to illustrate the best use of this new technology in a wild, unlimited prototype – just like it was 30 years ago.
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This was the Yamaha OX99-11. Developed in 1992 with mid-decade production in mind, the OX99-11 linked Yamaha’s Formula 1 engine development business with the supercar sector. But because it was a product of Japan overshadowed by the bubble economy, Yamaha wasn’t content to cram its V12 into a cookie cutter coupe. Instead, it made a delightfully strange shell that housed all of its technical capabilities.
The OX99-11 used the same 3.5 liter V12 that was used in Brabham and Jordan vehicles at the time – just detuned to 400 hp – and built on essentially the same carbon fiber chassis on which the F1 vehicles of the day are based. The result looked like a softer Group C prototype with a narrow, jet fighter-like canopy that arches over the cockpit and a whimsical front wing that is built into the nose upside down. It weighed 2,535 pounds – about 30 pounds heavier than a McLaren F1.
It got even stranger in this canopy because of the seating arrangement chosen by Yamaha. Yes, “arrangement” is the appropriate word here, as there is actually a passenger seat behind the driver, a tandem placement. However, I’m not sure who would actually want to sit back, given the lack of legroom and the fact that the headrest is literally attached to the partition between the engine and cab.
The result was an especially weird supercar in an era best known for weird supercars it is PeersNo production was seen. Yamaha had hired UK-based International Automotive Design to lead the project, but the two companies struggled to work together so they eventually split. Yamaha then threw the OX99-11 to its Ypsilon Technology Division, which also oversaw F1 engine development, to have the car ready in half a year. That proved difficult, and the Japanese economy, now in recession, was of no avail. The OX99-11 was discontinued in 1994.
But not before three prototypes have been made. And despite the short end of what may be a glorious letter of intent for the company, the failure of the OX99-11 program in the decades that followed never stopped Yamaha from flirting with the dream of auto manufacturing.
In 2015, Yamaha teased us again with the Sports driving concept. With a chassis designed by Gordon Murray Automotive and a nose that closely resembled those of some Toyotas, the Sports Ride was another slimmed-down machine for purists that unfortunately didn’t go beyond the prototype phase.
So this is a topic for Yamaha. With the latest news, at least we know that the company will continue to pass its expertise to sports cars that don’t bear its name. A thought that doesn’t stop us from marveling at the what-ifs.
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