| | | | Road test: 2008 Yamaha XT660Z Tenere launch – The nomadic Yamaha is back! |  Written: 15/04/2008 : 10:22. Read 5432 times (191/day). | Tenere or Ténéré is Tuareg (nomadic people) language for desert. The place Ténéré is a desert area in Niger and Chad in the southern Sahara. Sahara also means desert directly translated from Arabic. So before we start, I’m telling you that this is all about riding in the desert!
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Words: Tor “of Arabia” Sagen/Photography: Dentsu Live
(videos at the bottom of this page)
To drag the 2008 Yamaha XT660Z Tenere all the way to the actual Ténéré area would have been a step too far on a launch event. So Yamaha decided to make the international launch a rendezvous with Morocco. In 1983 Yamaha launched the original XT600Z Tenere right here in Morocco.
If my Dakar rally history serves me right, Stephane Peterhansel followed and won a total of 7 Paris-Dakar victories on the competition version of the Tenere. Nothing can speak up a desert rally offroad motorcycle more than that! In the years after Peterhansel, BMW and KTM have shared the victories in the premium class. KTM in fact is a squid in the rally game compared to Yamaha. I wonder whether Yamaha could persuade Peterhansel to give up his cars and do another rally on the Tenere for them…
The 2008 Yamaha XT660Z Tenere has literally risen up from the desert like a mirage. I was delighted to see it in Paris for the first time in 2007. The design, technical specifications and name have got desert rally written all over it! Yamaha really are serious about this and they call the Tenere the original adventure tourer. The Tenere touches the whole concept about desert rallies, to be nomadic and to be free!
After a long and extremely tough week of riding from Europe I could finally see the desert. My tongue had become one with the rest of my mouth now and I hadn’t seen water in days! I was overjoyed with an incredible pleasure inside when I could see the tops of palms that signalled an oasis just around the corner. I dropped the bike onto its side and started running towards the palms half mad from exhaustion and dehydration. Finally, I was to be greeted once again by the sweet taste of water! I could almost feel the sweet taste in my mouth already when I woke up as my comfy Royal Air Maroc flight landed in Agadir. -Sent a text to my girlfriend to signal my arrival in Morocco saying: “Play it again Sam”.
I had an extremely busy schedule arriving into Agadir airport late at night before the riding started in the morning. I ce...
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