1978 Yamaha XS Eleven XS11 - 10-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article

Description

1978 Yamaha XS Eleven XS11 - 10-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article
Original, Vintage Magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
Do you want the most
refined ride, the least
fussy engine, and the
quickest quarter-mile in
motorcycling? This new
Yamaha has it all....
• IT NOW BECOMES CLEAR THAT IN YAMAHA'S
fight for a larger share of the highway
market the XS750 triple was only a left
hook. Now they've delivered a genuine
knockout, their new XS11 four, and in this
model we have a new King of Superbikes.
The long-reigning Z1, though certainly
not grown soft with age, has been de-
cisively dethroned. Equally important,
with the Yamaha Eleven's arrival, we have
an expanded standard by which such
machines henceforth must be judged.
Lord knows the earlier generation of
Superbikes did not lack speed; it is an
unfortunate fact that some of them of-
fered little else, and some of us had
almost come to believe that performance
existed only in combination with bare-
minimum civility. Yamaha's Eleven should
banish that notion. It is by a solid margin
the fastest, quickest Superbike we've
tested; but even if its engine were a lot
less strong, if the big Yamaha needed
another full second to sprint through the
quarter-mile, it still would be a tremen-
dously impressive motorcycle. Take that
much muscle out of certain other early-
Seventies stormers and the residue
wouldn't be worth having. That's where
this new Yamaha breaks with the past,
and whatever else may come to us next
month or next year, no Superbike will ever
again entirely be forgiven rude behavior
because it reels in road especially fast.
Actually, broadened standard or not,
there remains a lot of appeal in sheer
straight-line performance and Yamaha
has been stunningly successful in provid-
ing that quality in the Eleven. Nobody gets
far riding the XS11 before they become
acquainted with the fact that it's strong:
we had ridden ours over hundreds of
open-road miles before going to the drag
strip and knew it was a bullet. However,
we'd also weighed the bike and knew it
was too heavy to be quick leaving the
starting line, which is where some of the
earlier Superbikes had earned their repu-
tations as sprinters. In fact, the Eleven
didn't launch itself like a dragster—but
when it gets about 50 feet away from the
line and finds its stride, what follows feels
and looks like the combined effects of
afterburner, rocket thrust, and The Force.
Only one other showroom-stock Super-...
13533-AL-7801-04