Tenere is a desert region in the south central Sahara - a place where, in 1977, Frenchman Thierry Sabine famously got lost on his motorbike for three days during the Abidjan-Nice Rally. The rest as they say is history - Sabine returned to France to create the Paris-Dakar rally and Yamaha's two wheeled namesake dominated the event in the 90s. The Yamaha Tenere made a comeback in recent times in with the new XTZ660, but the brand has bigger things in store with a twin-cylinder "Super Tenere" in the pipeline which will compete against the BMW R1200GS. Yamaha gave some hints as to the makeup of the new adventure bike at the Tokyo Motor Show with its eye-catchingly bizarre mock-up - which was appropriately wrapped in desert garb - sporting a shaft drive and side mounted radiators.
There's no final detail on when this bike might make production, but we do know that it will feature traction control, ABS, a unified braking system and a twin-cyclinder engine that's expected to be around 1200ccs.
We must confess to a bit of a soft spot for the Tenere here at Gizmag - our publisher Mike Hanlon has had one in the garage (the only test bike he has ever both crashed and bought), and my faithful old XT 600 finally died last year after much punishment. We're both keen to see what the Super Tenere can do when it makes production.
Check out the gallery for more pics of Yamaha's art installation come mock-up from the floor of the Tokyo Motor Show.
