WORDS: Ben Wilkins
PHOTOS: Geoff Osborne
YZ85LW
YAMAHA’S GROM
ROCKETSHIPS
Yamaha’s YZ85 has been brought bang up-to-date for 2019
and there’s an all-new YZ65 for the smaller Groms too.
t's fair to say that Yamaha hasn't
shown its smaller capacity two-stroke
guns much love in recent years. The
YZ85 got a minor update in 2015, but
for the 2019 model year it's been given
plenty of attention. And Yamaha has
introduced an all-new model too, the
YZ65, giving Yamaha an upgrade path
for riders of its first time rider PW and
42 KIWI RIDER
TT-R machines. We took both bikes to
Leighton's Farm along with a handful of
junior riders who were more than keen to
give the new Yamahas a proper test. The
hardest part would turn out to be getting
each of them to come in at the end of
their turn – but that was easily solved by
letting each of them ride until they ran
out of fuel...