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Just back from the Yamaha YZF R15 launch in Bangalore which also coincided with the deliveries of the motorcycles. The first batch of bikes were given out only to owners who paid the entire 1.12 lakhs upfront. People who have bought the bike on Finance will start to get their bikes this weekend onwards. Easha R. Swamy was the first person to take delivery of the bike in Bangalore*, and surprise, he happens to be a good friend. Another amongst the first 5 deliveries was another friend Anil Kumar. So, expect to hear about the bike soon. The event started with all the prospective owners landing up at Pacer Motors and wearing Yamaha Racing blue t-shirts with the R15 logos on them and then being carted off to The Chancery on Residency Road for an afternoon of presentation and snacks. The attendees were shown promotion videos and another video where the journalists who got to ride the video spoke. 
Sanjay Tripathy of Yamaha made some very interesting observations amongst which a couple of them stood out. Firstly he made it clear in his talk that they did not intend this bike for "posers". He said that it was a performance machine meant to be ridden hard. I would agree and it makes me wonder all the more, why then did Yamaha not put more into the package?! Hmm... Secondly, he said that some of the biker hangouts have been discussing various things about the new bike and how big a disappointment it was etc. He said places, like x/y/z bhp, whatever nomads etc. had assumed a lot and had been posting all kinds of things, despite Yamaha not giving actual figures. General feeling is that the whole thing got blown out of proportion because Yamaha did not give any performance figures in the first place. So, I would take it with a pinch of salt. Anyways, here are some snaps from the evening!  Yamaha brought in a bunch of school girls to hang around the R15. Like in Japan we say "Small Yamaha - Small Girls"  A whole bunch of R15s were here today, wonder how a grid full of them would look!  Easha Swamy taking official delivery of the first R15 in Bangalore  Anil takes delivery of his Black Yamaha R15  Easha getting his first taste of stardom! On MTV...  Wonder why only the blue R15s have the LC4V stickers, anyone? * Someone has been unofficially riding it around for a couple of days now. |
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