Celebrating Success / New Yamaha Tenere 700 World Rally

There's another variation on the T7, inspired by the bike's racing success. The new Yamaha Tenere 700 World Rally model is here for 2023, and it's supposed to be the most extreme version of this bike yet.

The improvements start with the fork and shock. Yamaha put a high-performance, fully-adjustable 43mm KYB fork on the bike, with 9 inches of travel. In back, there's a new adjustable shock with oversized bump stop and piggyback reservoir and 8.7 inches of travel. Yamaha doesn't say much about the new suspension, but like the rest of this machine, it's supposedly built to handle a thrashing, with lessons learned from Yamaha's race program involving the World Raid variant of the T7.

There's also an 18-position adjustable steering damper on the World Rally, courtesy of Ohlins.

Long-distance adventures in the wilderness require the capability to push on far past the gas stations. The Tenere 700 World Rally comes with twin 23-liter fuel tanks mounted lower than the standard T7 model. This is supposed to improve handling, and make it easier to move fore-and-aft on the bike (also, possibly, Yamaha is gaining inspiration from KTM's low-mount 890 tanks!). To go with those improved ergos, Yamaha also installed a two-part, flat rally-style seat.

The Yamaha Tenere 700 World Rally comes with a paint job that is supposed to recall the rally-winning bikes of the company's history. Photo: Yamaha

This bike still uses the same CP2 parallel twin engine that Yamaha also puts in the XSR700, FZ-07, etc. There are no high-tech performance tweaks. However, Yamaha did install a lightweight Akrapovic muffler that will reduce weight and also probably sound more powerful, which is the only upgrade many riders really care about…

Because this bike is intended to go off-road, it gets a three-way ABS system that can be switched off. As you’d expect, Mode 1 offers the antilock treatment at both ends of the bike, Mode 2 offers front wheel antilock only, and Mode 3 completely switches off the system.

Don't expect a big horsepower boost from this muffler, but it will no doubt sound meaner than the usual T7 can. Photo: Yamaha

At this point, Yamaha only confirmed the new Tenere 700 World Rally for Europe, same as the Extreme and Explore variants. We’re still waiting for Yamaha to show the same interest in North American sales as it has for Euro sales, but we’re sure that someday, these up-spec’d machines will hit our shores.