Bike Trader

• £12,999
• Carbon components
• Two colour schemes

YAMAHA’S flagship adventure bike, the Super Tenere, had a price drop in December 2011 to £11,999. The result? It topped the sales charts for adventure bikes that same month.

And now Yamaha has said it will put the Worldcrosser concept, first shown at Motorcycle Live in 2010, into production. It's looking like this production model is very close to the original too.

The Worldcrosser will be on sale in March for £12,999 (excluding road fund licence and first registration fee so budget for a few hundred quid on top).

So what makes the Worldcrosser different from a standard Super Tenere? Well that extra £1000 gets you a machine which has additional goodies all aimed at helping us ride off road. So that means knobbly tyres for starters and then a skid plate, a drive shaft shield and a rear brake protector to protect essential parts – all manufactured from sexy black-anodised aluminium. All are shown below in these photos below.

The exotic materials don’t stop there as the Worldcrosser also comes with carbon-fibre sidepanels, fork protectors and frame guards.

It will go on sale in two colour options – black speedblock with yellow-gold accents and red speedblock with red accents.

Standard bike below for comparison

Look closely at the standard bike versus the Worldcrosser. The Worldcrosser has a much grittier and adventurous look too thanks to those knobbly tyres and added protection items.The graphics are also a lot more interesting, namely the addition of a larger Super Tenere logo and the speedblock styling on the screen.

This new edition of the Super Tenere comes at a time when the offering from other manufacturers in the adventure bike market becomes increasingly competitive; Triumph has launched a 1200cc Explorer at £11,149, Kawasaki its Versys 1000 at £9,499 and Honda its Crosstourer with the price still to be announced.

You can understand Yamaha's urgency to bring out something in reply to these new models - but the announcement of the Worldcrosser is a real surprise. Sadly, those who rushed out to buy a standard Super Tenere following the price cut might be feeling a little disappointed that they've missed out on buying the Worldcrosser. With only a few more months until it goes on sale, they possibly would have been prepared to wait a little longer for it had they'd known it was on the way - even if it meant spending a further £1000.