Even in a big country like the United States, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to motorcycles. A tiny tiddler like this two-stroke 1970 Yamaha 80 G6S isn’t made for cross-country travel, but I’d guess that a few owners have done just that over the last five decades. The seller has this fairly rare bike listed here on eBay in La Pine, Oregon, there is no reserve, and the current bid price is $790.
I’d be a serious bidder if there weren’t shipping charges that would be close to the current bid price. Engine size notwithstanding, I’m a wicked huge fan of Yamahas and any make of these sporty/scrambler-type motorcycles. With a 73-cc single, this bike is huge compared to a few of my favorite bikes, which are 49-cc monsters. Yamaha had great success in road racing and a few of their bikes were styled with road racing themes, even small ones like this G6S.
The classic racer look blends smoothly with the pressed steel frame that a lot of small bikes had in this era. I love the look of this one. There are no turn signals on this Yamaha, not that anyone uses them anymore, but they were available. The seller has provided a ton of great photos in a separate link here, and it also includes receipts for work that has been done and a video. Well done! You can see that it’s far from perfect, but would be a nice start to a restoration project.
I believe that the Yamaha G6S was made between 1969 for the 1970 model year until the end of 1972, but I saw a couple of other webpages that list them as being made only for model year 1970. Or, maybe they were just offered here in the U.S. for 1970? I don’t have a Yamaha book in my library, which is weird and has to be remedied ASAP, and there isn’t much info at all on these bikes out there. Hopefully one of you will know the ressssssssst of the story. In any case, this one has low miles and the seller says that they spent $2,500 on it recently, which is easy to do.
The engine is Yamaha’s 73-cc two-stroke rotary valve single, which would have had around five horsepower and a top speed of around 50 mph, more than enough for a neighborhood cruiser. Yamaha’s famous Autolube system provides the proper mix of two-cycle oil to gas and it’s backed by a four-speed manual transmission. The seller says that it runs great and in a ring-a-ding-ding two-stroke way, this Yamaha rings all of my bells. Are there any fans of small bikes out there?
These were once as plentiful as leaves in the fall. I was always impressed by the machine’s shot-glass displacement. My grade school buddy’s family owned a construction company and I’m 98% certain that my friend had this 80cc Yamaha bike. They had Benellis, little Honda 50s/125s, Vespas, no-name little two-strokes and who knows what else. When the family would clean out the garage the area in front of it looked like a Saigon traffic jam.
The family was also a customer on my newspaper delivery route. Mr. D always gave me a more than generous tip for Christmas; I still marvel at the memory. For that, I’d make 100% certain that the family’s paper was tucked safely between the storm door and the main entry door. They also had another tradition of giving kids $1 and a candy bar for Halloween because their home was a little out of the way along the still-under-construction Route 1 Bypass.
Class act. Not the norm today.
Good people to be sure. The next neighbor about a half-mile away was the area’s district justice who officiated at my marriage after I’d been out of the newspaper delivery business for several years. The Justice lived way down a hill with his family at the edge of the woods overlooking the creek. It had to have taken six or seven minutes just to deliver their paper because the winding drive was so steep; so I hoofed it down and back. I received a nice tip from them at Christmas too. Very decent sorts. Best wishes.
Just the ticket for riding down to town for Sunday coffee,
You could probably unbolt the engine with one hand and set it on your workbench with the other. Try that with your ElectraGlide.
On the other hand, you can keep up with traffic with the Harley. I wouldn’t try that with this Yamaha!
Downtown? Not a prob, unless you just hafta blasta…?
Not designed for the open highway….
Y’know, Scotty, if you really want this I’ll bet we could setup a relay of BF readers to get it to you!! It’d take longer than by freight but it’d be a hoot to do it IMHO.
Just a thought.
That or just buy Scottie a bike rack for his Prius!
The fact that this isn’t already in the back of a R&L truck headed for the great nort’, only shows the amazing restraint the author has. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING,,would fit in better in his “collection” than this, including the Rokon, several Honda scooters, a vintage Yam “Twin Jet” 100, a Yam 750 3 banger road bike( I strongly advise him to restore,,,or I will), I think that’s it,,,anyway as mentioned above, at one time, the streets were filled with smoke, indicating a small Asian bike just went by. College towns were a big market for these. They predated mopeds, and the then cheapest way to get a college student to the sub shop at night.
Oddly, as a kid, we had a step through Honda 50 for years, later, the old man brought home a 1966 Suzuki 80 K11(?), that my brother still has in his barn. Having the same style, it looks like this was Yamahas answer to the Suzuki K series. I remember, as a kid, it seemed so much more like a REAL motorcycle, and we ran it on whatever oil dad had laying around. “Howard? Where’s my 3 in 1 oil?”,,,oh, oh,,,
Fast forward to today. In my area, and others, I suppose, all the rage now are these “E-bikes”, and I must admit, with my bicycling days limited for health reasons, an E bike is a possibility. What is the alternative for me, is a small dirt bike, like a Honda Trail 90. E bikes are okay, but, again, they make a poor motorcycle, and poor bicycle. No license required, or plates, but they don’t keep up with traffic, a hazard, and aren’t allowed on standard bicycle trails,,,so what do you have, really? We just can’t keep “plugging these things in”, with no regard to where the juice comes from, and I’m going back to a gas motorcycle like this. With only 6 bids, and increasing in $1 dollar increments, interest is spotty, at best and that could be a good thing for people like me,,,all 6 of us, author included . Hey, the sale isn’t over yet, and SG could very well be a bidder. That would be really neat!
I seldom saw a Yamaha 80 out west. The 60 was popular then the Twin Jet 100 came out and that’s all the average boy wanted. A few Rotary-Jet 100s but even those were grossly outnumbered by the Twin Jet. Yamaha sure liked those rotary valves; they were in nearly every small bike they made. Well and good until they failed.
I remember back in the 60s, thinking, “when are the Japanese going to learn how to properly shape a gas tank?” The American and European bikes had the teardrop shape but it seemed that all the Japanese could do was come up with something that resembled the wad of chewing gum stuck to the underside of a chair. Oh they eventually got it but it took a while…
Check out the Yamaha FS1E or Fizzer as us Brits call them. Clearly a close relative of this bike but 49cc to comply with learner rider laws in Europe.
Arrrrrrgh, I was this close to throwing down a $1,150 bid and I would have gotten it, but in looking at the photos again, I’d want it to be perfect and it’s not worth having to disassemble and paint everything, plus shipping costs. Oh well, I don’t need anything else anyway. Do any of us need another vehicle?!