Yamaha Motor celebrates 70 years of creating Kando

Yamaha Motor is proud to be celebrating the 70th Anniversary of its foundation. To commemorate this milestone, the company is disclosing an updated company logo accompanied by a new brand video that honours Yamaha’s rich legacy, and highlights its enduring mission and core values, whilst unveiling the essence of its signature – Revs Your Heart.

Established on July 1, 1955 by the visionary Genichi Kawakami, Yamaha Motor was born with a bold spirit of innovation, entering a motorcycle market already filled with strong players. The company introduced its first motorcycle, the YA-1 – nicknamed the “Red Dragonfly”, an air-cooled, 2-stroke, single-cylinder 125cc engine that embodied the company’s craftmanship, creativity and excellence. To prove its quality, Yamaha took the YA-1 to the racetrack only ten days after the establishment of the company, competing in the 3rd Mount Fuji Ascent Race and the 1st Asama Highlands Race that same year. It won the 125cc class of both races. Still today, these early triumphs portray our Spirit of Challenge, pushing us to compete at the very highest level.

Ever since its foundation, Yamaha has always pursued its mission to provide its valued customers the philosophy of Kando through its products and services. Kando is the Japanese word to express the deep satisfaction and excitement one gets when encountering something of exceptional value, quality, and performance; a thrilling emotion that adds spice to life and gets customers’ and our hearts revving. Throughout 70 years of persistently aiming for excellence, we design, develop and manufacture products and services – also through exchange of technologies developed by our racing and design teams – that exceed our customers’ expectations. And we will continue to do so, guided and inspired by our five values:

• Innovation: we are constantly seeking to generate new and original ideas from various creative perspectives that are unbound by the conventions or norms of the day.
• Excitement: we are seeking out and aiming to provide what makes our customers happy and making sure that we ourselves enjoy the process of delivering it.
• Confidence: when using our products and services, we aim to give our customers a sense of trust and peace of mind through the quality of our products and services.
• Emotion: we aim to provide products and services that fascinate people’s artistic senses and that create long-lasting memories.
• Ties: we strive to win the hearts of people around the world and form a bond with them by creating value that surpasses their expectations.