Yamaha has announced the creation of a new brand, Star Motorcyces, which will basically be all of their cruiser motorcycles split off from the Yamaha brand. Seems the cruisers have been popular and have attained their own identitiy so Yamaha decided they could stand on their own.
What I don’t get is that they will not have their own dealers, they’ll just have some different displays within existing Yamaha dealers so how different are they? The models themselves are not new, just the cruisers you already know. When car manufacturers create a new brand, they break off entirely, like Toyota and Lexus or Honda and Acura. Those brands stand alone with separate dealers and totally new models. Over time they will eventually produce new models so I guess whatever comes out from here on will be a Star and not a Yamaha if it’s a cruiser but how separate they are in a buyer’s mind will be the deciding factor. They have their own website address, starmotorcycles.com, but right now it’s just a tab on the Yamaha website. I imagine that will change in the future.
My old favorite, the V-Max is listed as a Star now but it’s still the same old V-Max and will always be a Yamaha V-Max to me, after all, 20 years of history doesn’t change with a name change. This new brand by calling it something new is like saying a motorcycle is a new model because the paint is a different color and the decals look different. But to be fair they just announced it so we’ll have to wait and see what becomes of it, maybe they have some big plans.