The original Yamaha 80 holds a very special place in my heart. It was my first real motorcycle, after a '57 Allstate Cruisaire. My Rotary Jet was a very early 1963 model, before the invention of oil injection. You can read a brief introduction to that bike at the beginning of Tiddlerosis. The machine pictured here is a 1964 model. You can see an old B&W photo of my machine on the other post. My bike was exactly the same color as this one, fire engine red and silver. There were many issues that were new to the Yamaha 80, and one of them was a selection of many colors, either in solids or with silver trim. One of the first-year brochures displayed a rich, deep purple with silver, and I have seen blue with silver, solid red, and I believe I vaguely remember seeing a white with silver and a yellow with silver. As you see from the other photo, I added red and white vinyl saddlebags to my bike, and for reasons of which I am unsure at this time, mine had turn signals, but this one does not. I have seen versions of the 80 both with and without.
There were few competing 80-100cc Japanese tiddlers when the Rotary Jet was introduced in early '63, but several would appear over the next couple of years. The two biggest sellers, the plain putt-putt Honda 90 was launched six months after the Rotary Jet, and the Super 90, a legendary equal to the Rotary Jet, blasted onto the tarmac a year later. The Suzuki Trojan 80 was the only sporty street model in this class challenging the Rotary Jet until the Super 90. Yamaha really set a precedent with the introduction of the 80, quickly adding a trail model that would dominate the class in off-road racing for several years.
The Rotary Jet was a quick little sucker. Although the claimed top speed was 60 mph, the most a little shrimp like me could ever coax out of it was 53 mph, but it would get there in a hurry! Its big claim to fame was the new rotary valve engine. Look at the photo: the carburetor is hidden away down in the crankcase; that canister above it is the air filter. You could remove the baffle in the exhaust pipe to try to intimidate the competition a bit, but you would not go any faster.
Yamaha did a hell of a job upstaging the big volume seller of the day, the Honda 50 Sport, at a price of only about $50 more. Let's run through the specs. As mentioned earlier, the color choices were more advanced and the metallic silver fenders and headlamp nacelle were metal instead of plastic. Both machines had four-speed footshifts, but the Yamaha was a rocker type. The Yamaha had real telescopic forks instead of the dinky leading link type on the Honda. The seat was of a softer foam and the handgrips were larger. The whole motorcycle had more of a big bike feel to it. As I said, mine had turn signals, but none of the Hondas did at that time. Both machines were kickstart and included rear footpegs, but the ones on the Yamaha folded up. The Yamaha's exhaust pipe was a clean, rounded, megaphone type, without an ugly seam like that on the Honda. The key was one of those strange little thingies with a fat plastic head that fit into the left side panel. The pressed steel frame was a smooth Y-shaped monocoque design. The enclosed chainguard, fender flaps, and chrome-paneled gas tank were similar features found on both models.
Although the Honda Super 90 eventually outsold the Rotary Jet, this is clearly the model that really launched Yamaha from American showrooms. The company's earlier models were certainly racy enough, easily blowing key Honda competitors in the weeds, but these never really sold in large numbers in the U. S. Any pre-'63 Yamaha has always been a pretty rare beastie in this country, unlike the very common Dreams and Honda 50's. It did not hurt Yamaha's fortunes a bit to become the company that invented oil injection only about two years later, either!