One of the most anticipated middleweight adventure bikes, the Yamaha Tenere 700, is on a worldwide tour, across Australia, Africa, South America and Europe, being ridden by expert riders to show off the capability of the Tenere 700, before a full production model is unveiled. The Yamaha Tenere 700 World Raid has already completed the first leg of the worldwide tour in Australia, and will now head to Africa, more specifically, to follow part of the original Paris-Dakar rally route in Morocco before moving to South America, and finally, Europe.

The Yamaha Tenere 700 World Raid is based on the Yamaha MT-07, and is powered by the same 689 cc, parallel-twin engine as the MT-07. The engine makes 75 bhp of maximum power at 6,500 rpm and 68 Nm of peak torque at 6,500 rpm, but Yamaha is likely to change the state of tune of the engine on the Tenere 700, possibly with the engine having more low-end grunt suited for off-road riding over different kinds of terrain.


The Tenere 700 was first showcased as the Yamaha T7 concept bike at the EICMA 2016 show in Milan. A year later, the bike is still in prototype state - the current Tenere 700 World Raid. And now, Yamaha will be running the World Raid prototype through a series of events across the world, possibly to gauge the performance, and possibly even fine tune the eventual production model.

The Australia leg is already over, having been piloted by Rodney Faggoter, and next, the Tenere 700 World Raid will head to Africa, following part of the route of the original Paris-Dakar rally in Merzouga, where rally legend Stephane Peterhansel will be tracing the route, where he won an incredible thirteen Paris to Dakar rallies. The third stage will be in South America, to the location of the current Dakar route, and will be piloted by Adrien van Beveren, who incidentally is part of the Yamalube Yamaha Official Rally Team, and lost a podium spot at this year's Dakar Rally by just one minute.

The final leg will see the 2018 Yamaha Tenere 700 World Raid piloted by world traveller Nick Sanders, French enduro racer David Fretigne, Touratech founder Herbert Schwartz and Spanish enduro rider Cristobal Guerrero who will take turns to navigate the bike from the UK to the Italian Alps, possibly just before winter kicks in, and in time, perhaps for Yamaha to officially unveil the production model of the Yamaha Tenere 700 in this year's edition of the EICMA show in Milan.