My favourite bike has to be the Yamaha 0W31 of 1976.
I remember seeing pictures of them at Daytona in '76 in 3 colours and then seeing Roberts and Baker on them at the Transatlantic series just after.
The colours were:
Yamaha USA - Yellow and Black - I think they called it the bumblebee colour scheme.
Yamaha Canada - Red and Black, the same as above but in a maroony red instead of bright yellow
Yamaha Japan - the standard red horizontal stripe with a thin black outline stripe on white.
Three questions:
How come Yamaha USA and Canada ran different colours from the official Yamaha, when in Europe all of the national semi works teams ran the official Yamaha colours or something very near to it? I am thinking of Arvidsson (Finland), Mitsui (GB/NL?) and Hosteller (Switzerland) were the same as or very similar colours to the works team and even Venemotos colours were pretty much the Yamaha colours too. Ok, I know Sonauto in France ran in Gauloises colours, but I figure that was the sponsorship arrangement.
Where did the Bumblebee colours and black and white block stripe stripe come from, and who had it first, Yamaha USA or Yamaha Canada?
I recall seeing a blue version of the bumblebee colour scheme once. I can't remember where now, might have been at a classic meet in UK or NZ. Was this ever an official colour scheme and if so to what team did it belong or was this just a privateer scheme?