Bimota's Middleweight Gets Injected

BIMOTA’S MIDDLEWEIGHT GETS INJECTED

With the ongoing trend toward smaller displacement, high-performance sportbikes, is the time right for a 600cc exotic? Bimota thinks so.

Latest bike to emerge from the company’s Rimini, Italy, skunk works is the YB9SRI, follow-up to the successful YB9SR that won the 1995 Italian Sport Production Championship. The “I” is indicative of the Bimota/TDD fuel-injection system that now feeds the Yamaha YZF600 motor, and which is said to increase power across the rev range, culminating in a claimed 106 peak horsepower at 12,500 rpm. A wider (5.5-inch) rear wheel and three-piece fairing (said to allow easier servicing than the carbureted version’s one-piece body) are the main changes for ’96. The YB9SRI is available in two colors, red and yellow-hut not here, where a spokesman for the U.S. importer, Moto Cycle, says it would have to sell for approximately $17,000 in order to recoup the costs of EPA certification.