While one gets to see a lot of weird or outrageous motorcycles in their lifetime, most of them are just concepts which never see the light of day. The subject matter for this article though, is not one of those concepts. It is a full-fledged production motorcycle, and it’s from Japan. We got to test ride the Yamaha Niken, the ‘subject matter’, in Australia, and it won us over despite many of our reservations regarding the unconventional motorcycle… or a trike. 

Now, the Niken is a trike… it has 3 wheels, and it is also one of our favourites because this is probably the only trike that is almost fully… ridden. In order to knock some more sense into that sentence, let’s say that it is a Leaning Multi-Wheel Vehicle… That did not make a lot of sense either. So, let’s just put it this way… it is a motorcycle with two wheels on the front, instead of two. How does it work? Let’s find out. 

On the front of the Niken, we have Parallel quadrilateral arms that support its cantilevered suspension and allow it to ‘lean’. The Niken can achieve up to 45 degrees of lean angle before the footpeg feelers start to scream. The cantilevered suspension comprises two USD fork legs on each side; a 43mm rear leg with fully adjustable preload and damping, and a 41mm front leg that holds the wheel/brake assembly in alignment.

Coming to the more pressing matters… if the Niken has two wheels on the front and it can lean, both the wheels have to follow a different radius in the same corner. Yamaha has dealt with that using a group of tie-rods and linkages that include offset steering knuckles (Ackermann steering geometry, as used on most cars) so that the inside wheel turns progressively more than the outside. Neat… 

We mentioned that the Niken has a maximum lean angle of ‘just’ 45 degrees. But you see, its mission is not to beat supersport motorcycles on the racetrack. What it means to do is to make cornering safer by increasing stability and grip. It dramatically reduces the risk of losing the front and even more so in adverse weather conditions. 

On normal dry roads, one may not want to limit their lean angles, but in cold weather or wet roads, the added safety is surely a plus. Because hey, loss of traction equals eating dirt (most probably). And that is what the Niken does. Double the contact patch and increase traction. It’s not that a Niken won’t fall… it’s just that it takes a lot to make it do that. 

While we were a bit apprehensive for the first few km, the Niken is an easy-to-trust motorcycle (for obvious reasons), and after a while, you start to enjoy the remarkably safer cornering. And while the heft on the front end makes it feel like it’d be a pig to turn, surprisingly, it isn’t. The front-wheel track is wide enough to provide more stability than a single wheel and is narrow enough to help the motorcycle remain very manoeuvrable. The Bridgestone Battalax Adventure A41 tyres help in establishing the Niken as a very good handler. 

It is so good that it almost reaches the point of being a revelation. You see a corner, you just do what you do on a regular motorcycle, and it leans… and turns. But the confidence it inspires is just endless, and one can really, really push the Niken more easily than any other motorcycle. Braking has the same story… there’s just so much grip everywhere that you almost feel invincible. Oh… yeah… braking… it has 2 discs up front, one on each wheel, and one on the rear. The brakes are nice and have a lot of stopping power, but then again, their prowess is outshone by the brilliantly engineered front end. 

The Niken sits on a hybrid frame. The headstock is made of cast steel and is attached to a tubular steel mainframe and a cast aluminium swingarm. It has a long-ish wheelbase, which does make it just a tad bit ‘sluggy’ in quick directional changes, but the stability in a straight line on ‘respectable speeds’ more than makes up for it.

Talking about the motor, Niken gets the liquid-cooled, transverse 847cc, DOHC in-line triple that powers the MT-09 and the Tracer 900, on which the Niken is roughly based on. While no official figures are available, we believe that it makes somewhere around 115 bhp of power and around 90 Nm of torque from what we can guess basis the revisions to the engine and the pre-revision numbers from the other models. 

The amount of power that it makes is satisfactory, and riding around highways and winding curvy roads offers an ample amount of fun. What really makes it a lot of fun is the sound of the crossplane triple. The engine also possesses inherent Yamaha smoothness and refinement, and goes a long way in establishing the Niken as a fun and comfortable sports tourer. The ride-by-wire system, traction control, riding modes, cruise control and the quickshifter, coupled with the relaxed ergonomics, Niken is a motorcycle that one would love to munch miles on. 

All in all, a beginner would love the Niken for being the safe and forgiving motorcycle that it is, and even seasoned riders would appreciate how much they can push the Niken without risking a lot. When it comes to trikes, the Niken is surely one of the best that there is… and even in the world of single-track motorcycles, it is surely a formidable one.