Mitsui Yamaha's were ridden by Alan Carter, Dave Potter, John Dodds, Dieter Braun and Martin Wimmer among others. I always though that they were the British Yamaha distributors (from an answer to an earlier post on the forum), but then Braun and Wimmer are German and Dodds lived in Germany and was an Aussie. Wimmer and Braun would have no real connection to the uk and I can't think why they would be sponsored by the British Yamaha distributor. So there seems to be a strong German connection to the team.
Does anyone know what Mitsui were and what their connection with Yamaha is/was?
Were they importers or just sponsors and was this one team or different teams with the same or similar names?
Who were the other riders who rode for Mitsui Yamaha? Were they also Brits, Germans or people like Dodds who had a strong connection with the country?
From what I can gather, now there is a Japanese trading company called Mitsui and they do have a head office in London. I don't know if this is the same company (I am guessing it is), but there seems to be no current Yamaha connection that I can see. There is a Mitsui Yamaha Ltd of Biggleswade, but I don't think this is the same organisation as the Japanese trading company.
Just out of interest as well who were the Yamaha national dealer/importer teams in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I know of Sonauto (France), Hosteller (Switzerland), Belgarda (Italy), Arwidsons Finland) and Venemotos (Venezuela). And of course there were the "official" teams out of the USA, Canada, Europe (Amsterdam) and Japan. I'm not sure of the details of Australian Team I think it was a dealer team, but don't know how that was organised. Pretty much all of the importer teams seem to be still going and still associated with Yamaha in some way or another - even if Hosteller are more into Motocross these days.
Edited by brands77, 11 July 2024 - 11:41.
