Surprise! Yamaha’s Niken Does Wheelies And Rides Like A Regular Motorcycle

Long before I rode the three-wheeled Niken over Austria's legendarily twisty Grossglockner Pass at breakneck speeds or even saw the bike in person, I knew it was good at one thing: raising eyebrows. We motorcyclists are a skeptical, conservative bunch (even if we like to think otherwise), and something as unconventional as the Niken is bound to prompt loads of questions. What is it, what's it like to ride, who is it for, and perhaps most importantly, what's the point?

These and many, many more queries were bouncing around in my head in the days leading up to the international press launch of the Niken in Kitzbühel, Austria. Seat time on this wild three-wheeler cleared the air on a number of topics for me, so hopefully what’s written here will help bring things into focus for you too.

Let's kick things off with the existential inquiry. Why does this thing exist? Rather than being the answer to a question nobody asked, the Niken is the result of a 10-year quest to build a motorcycle with "unprecedented front-end grip." Adding another front wheel was how Yamaha's engineers met that goal.

Is it a motorcycle? It leans and countersteers, it has a clutch and a manual transmission. It doesn’t balance on its own. It even does wheelies. Other than the fact that there’s an extra wheel up front, it checks all the right boxes. In other words it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it just doesn’t look like a duck.

The Niken is essentially an FJ-09 with a two-wheeled front end that's supposed to give the bike exceptional front-end grip. From the headstock back things are conventional—you're looking at a new, tubular-steel frame holding an 847cc triple with a slightly heavier crankshaft, a longer aluminum swingarm, a lower, larger seat, the switchgear and dash from the MT-10, and a wider, higher handlebar that's several inches closer to your lap.

In front of that handlebar, however, things get weird. Under an expanse of curving fairing plastic is an arrangement of linkages and pivots that put two wheels on the road and allow the Niken to lean (up to 45 degrees) and steer like a conventional two wheeler.

Side-to-side inclination is accomplished with a stacked set of massive, transverse cast-aluminum links that keep the wheels aligned in the vertical plane as the bike leans. At either end of the parallel links, secondary headstocks angled just 20 degrees from vertical hold tandem fork tubes that support cantilevered 15-inch wheels with automotive-style lug nuts. Steering input is transferred from the handlebar to a tie-rod at a 1:1 ratio, and offset endlinks ensure Ackermann geometry is maintained so that both wheels follow their own arcs, thereby avoiding slippage and scrubbing while cornering. In the end, there’s an additional 100 pounds of hardware and one more traction-producing tire on the ground. The wheels reside 410mm (about 16 inches) apart, with their contact patches trailing just 74mm behind the steering axes.

The Niken’s linkage design, aggressive steering geometry, 50/50 laden-weight distribution, and wheel size were all chosen in an effort to give the bike light and natural handling.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly didn’t think the Niken would feel so, well, normal. There is a sense that the contact patch(es) are a long way from the grips, but it’s no more peculiar than your first spin on a Telelever BMW. You still countersteer (unlike on a Can-Am Spyder or a wheels-in-the-back trike), and the Niken leans just like you’d expect, though there’s less of a tendency to fall in toward the apex than on a single-track machine. If the Niken’s front end was hidden from view, I don’t think I would have known there was an extra wheel down there.

Despite the added mass of the front end and all those extra pivots (by my count there are 27 additional bearings!), steering doesn’t take any more effort, at least at low speeds. In terms of balance, the Niken is rock-solid stable while doing figure eights in a parking lot, with the same sort of planted feel you get on a Gold Wing or Road Glide. There’s no self-balancing feature or front-end lockout, so if you don’t put a foot or the sidestand down at stops, you’re going to have 580 pounds of motorcycle to pick up.

Once you start slicing through corners on the Niken, what stands out is how anchored that extra contact patch makes the front end feel. It’s on rails, even over cold, wet, dirty, or uneven surfaces, and you quickly realize you’ve got redundant traction. Think about it—even if one wheel is compromised (say, by putting it all the way off the pavement and into the dirt while cornering, which I did for the sake of testing), you still have another tire capable of supporting the front end of the bike.

Combine the Niken’s unshakable front-end traction with well-balanced suspension and totally natural-feeling handling and the next thing you know you’re running deep into corners on the brakes, even when there are rivulettes of snowmelt running across the road at the top of the 8,200-foot Grossglockner Pass.

If there’s anything that holds the Niken back on a twisty road, it’s the footpegs touching down. They kiss the pavement at 43 degrees of lean, just two degrees before the parallel linkage bottoms, at which point you’re running wide. There’s also no getting around the fact that the Niken is heavy and has a fairly long wheelbase. The wide bar helps keep steering light, but once you’re hauling ass and making quick direction changes the Niken is less nimble.

The significant added weight (both on the chassis and on the crankshaft) stunts the performance of the three-cylinder engine as well. Even so, it’s still a torquey and dynamic motor that’s made even more exciting thanks to a standard quickshifter.

On top of the fact that the Niken is fun to ride, it’s also got a comfy seat and upright ergos, and the ride quality is sport-tourer plush. I was concerned about how the dual front wheels would cope with rough roads and expected the bike to pitch sideways if one wheel hit a large bump, but it doesn’t. I even went so far as to put a wheel up on a curb and ride parallel to it. The front-end linkage let one wheel ride 4 inches higher than the other while the chassis remained perpendicular to the ground.

If you're like me, you saw that third wheel and immediately assumed the Niken is just another crutch for folks who aren't up for balancing on their own. As it turns out, the Niken is not aimed at beginners, but rather experienced riders who Yamaha categorizes as either "innovation oriented," "experience oriented," or "function oriented."

It took a conversation with Yamaha Europe’s Motorcycle Product Manager Leon Oosterhof to set me straight about the beginner-bike thing. “This is a performance machine, for experienced riders only,” Oosterhof says. “If it were for beginners, we’d have a different design altogether. It would be smaller, with perhaps an automatic transmission, a wider stance, and tilt lock.” Instead, the Niken has 105-ish horsepower, a quickshifter, and it’ll fall over if you don’t keep it balanced. Of course it has safety features like TC (that you can turn off) and ABS (that you can’t), but that stuff is status quo these days.

I pushed the topic further, positing that the Niken is just a Tricity scooter (the three-wheeled leaning scooter Yamaha launched in Asia and Europe in 2014) on steroids. Oosterhof anticipated that comparison. “So does that mean a Ford Fiesta is the same as a Mustang? The Tricity and Niken have three wheels and lean. Both Fords have four wheels and a steering wheel, but they’re designed for very different purposes and drivers.”

Furthermore, the narrow stance of the front wheels mean the Niken is classified as a motorcycle in Europe and America, so you’ll need a motorcycle license to ride it.

With two front wheels, the expectation is that the Niken must shed speed like it has reverse thrusters. But the Niken just has more traction than normal, not more braking hardware. There are two discs and two four-piston calipers at work, but those discs are fairly small at 265.6mm, which means less leverage against the contact patches.

So on dry pavement when traction is good, the Niken isn’t going to stop any faster than a two-wheeler. But, when road conditions are poor and traction is low, you’d better believe the Niken is going to stop in less distance and with less drama than a traditional bike.

Mashing the reach-adjustable front brake lever to simulate an emergency stop, the back of the bike dances as the rear tire comes off the ground and the ABS kicks in. The front wheels are independently controlled, so one wheel might be deep into the ABS while the other is gripping well. Even when that happens the bike doesn’t swerve to one side or get unbalanced. Stability is the name of the game with the Niken.

The pragmatist in me recognizes and appreciates the Niken’s benefits. All that extra front-end traction gives you a greater margin of safety than any two-wheeler, yet the bike feels so natural to ride. You gain a lot without giving up the classic motorcycling experience.

If I lived in the Pacific Northwest or the Rockies or somewhere else that has great roads but loads of inclement weather, I’d consider the Niken. I would also definitely add one to my garage if I was a wealthy man. (But I’d also have lots of other bikes, like a Ural sidecar and a H-D Forty-Eight Special).

But I’m not rich, and the Niken is probably going to cost about $15,000 or $16,000 when it becomes available later this year. And as a pragmatist, I can’t help but look at all those bearings that’ll need service, those two additional forks seals that’ll eventually start leaking, and the cost of buying three tires instead of two. Tack those projected maintenance costs onto the initial investment and lots of other bikes become more appealing.

After riding 200 miles on some of the most incredible roads in the world, I wasn’t sad to have done it on a three-wheeler. The only thing I was sad about was that the ride was over—because ripping around on the Niken was a lot of fun.

I’m surprised by how the Niken works and how conventional it feels. There’s no adjustment period or adaptation required to ride it; all the skills, instincts, and muscle memory you’ve cultivated over the years carry over perfectly.

Even if the Niken isn’t for you, it’s worth recognizing that this bike is the result of Yamaha pushing the boundaries of the sport and existing technologies, and you kind of have to respect the company for taking the risk. If you don’t like it, no worries, Yamaha and other manufacturers have loads of excellent two-wheelers you can enjoy. But if you’re gonna knock the Niken as a waste of effort or resources, then maybe you should forego your fuel injection and radial tires and go back to riding a horse. Because without experimentation and risk taking, that’s all we’d be riding.