Looking at a motorcycle means the rider is being looked at as well. In designing the styling of Yamaha motorcycles the designers keep an awareness of the rider as well as the machine, and how they are seen by the people around them. This is an awareness that is born of a design approach that seeks to give visual expression to performance.
For the YZF-R15 Yamaha first designed a cowling shape around the radiator that would make maximum use of the running airflow. To maximize the efficiency of the radiator, it is not only important how you design the shape of the front end where the air is drawn into the radiator but also the shape of the rear end, where the air is blown out and away. This is of course another area where experience from the R series model development was utilized. This is the reason why the central cowl area has a somewhat sculpted, 3-dimensional shape that creates a sense of volume to the machine. Another design element that reveals this model’s R series DNA is the ‘two-eyed’ headlight assembly. Regarding these headlights Yamaha created them as a unit that was faithful to the R1’s design in terms of the bulb structure and the inner portions. The YZF-R1 and YZF-R6 have a front mask design with surfaces structures in a way that actively cuts through the wind. Yamaha designed the YZF-R15 front also in this image of charging forward through the wind. This is another case of giving visual expression to performance.
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