So there you are walking down a lonely tropical beach early one morning when the tide lapping at the shore gently washes up a message in a bottle right before you. Cool!
“Ahh, mate, I go can one better than that!” barks Aussie rally and Safari racing hero Rod Faggotter. “I was walking along the beach one day and a whopping great timber crate washed up. When I busted it open, there was a shiny new Ténéré 700 inside it … and it was the only one in the world!
“And better than that, there was even a set of riding gear inside and it was all my size. Happy bloody days,” laughs the laconic Queenslander.
Too good a story to be true? No, it actually did happen, but if truth be told there was a dose of Hollywood theatrics involved.
It was all part of Yamaha’s global promotion for the then brand-new T7 prototype, which was shipped around the world and ridden by Yamaha heroes like Faggotter, Stéphane Peterhansel, Adrien van Beveren, Alessandro Botturri and Nick Sanders before the bike eventually went on sale in 2019.
Since then, the T7 has been a standout success for Yamaha, the tuning fork brand selling
