History
John Reed, an English designer who lived in California was contracted by Yamaha to design the ultimate custom bike. He designed a muscle cruiser based on the Venture engine.
Upon its release in 1985, the V-Max garnered instant critical acclaim and earned the title "Bike of the Year" from Cycle Guide. Sold both in Japan and abroad, the V-Max has been on the market with only minor modifications since the 1985 model year. The V-Max was noted for its quick acceleration, but was also criticized for its poor cornering ability and soft suspension.
Until 2008, the original V-Max was offered for sale through the Star Motorcycles division of Yamaha Motorcycles. Apart from a minor freshening to the bike's specifications in 1993, when the bike gained a larger-diameter fork to minimize high-speed wobbling and drift, four-piston brake calipers, and other handling and safety related upgrades, the 2008 V-Max was almost the same as the original 1985 version.
Read more about this topic: Yamaha V-Max And VMAX
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“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)