Yamaha’s Three-Wheeled LMW NIKEN Wins 2019 Red Dot Design “Best Of The Best” Award

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Yamaha Motor Co.’s three-wheeled NIKEN motorcycle recently picked up a Red Dot Award “Best of the Best” award in the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen’s Product Design 2019 competition. (Photo courtesy of Yamaha.)

There are any number of ways to describe Yamaha Motor Co.’s unique, eye-catching three-wheeled LMW (Leaning Multi-Wheel) NIKEN motorcycle. Possible descriptors now include “Red Dot Award Winner” and “Best of the Best,” following Germany’s Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen recently awarding Yamaha with those distinctions in its Product Design 2019 competition. Red Dot Design Awards are generally regarded as some of the world’s most prestigious design awards.

Styling & Profiling

Yamaha is no stranger to Red Dot Design Awards. The company has received one eight years running for its products, and the NIKEN represents the company’s fourth “Best of the Best” winner. Last year, the NIKEN also earned Yamaha a 2018 Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and Metropolitan Arts Press.

Yamaha says the NIKEN’s LMW technology “brings unprecedented riding” by making it “less susceptible to changes in the riding environment” while providing “a higher degree of stability during turns.” That stability, of course, comes in part from the bike’s two front wheels. Yamaha also points to the bike’s shoulder area and slim tank as providing a knee-gripping combination that “creates a feeling of greater dynamic movement.”

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Yamaha Motor Co. says the LMW (Leaning Multi-Wheel) technology that its NIKEN uses “contributes to the balance between nimbleness and stability via a suspension and steering-mechanism that uses a parallelogram link.” (Photo courtesy of Yamaha.)

Hop On

Available in granite gray at a roughly $16,000 MSRP, the NIKEN includes an 847cc liquid-cooled DOHC inline three-cylinder engine with 12 valves. The bike supports a 45-degree maximum lean angle and provides a six-speed transmission with multiplate assist and a slipper wet clutch, 32.3-inch (82-centimeter) seat height, and 59.4-inch (151-centimeter) wheelbase.

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Source: Yamaha