Take four Yamaha 1,000 motors, bolt them together, and what do you get? A Callaway Cyclone V16 producing 550 hp and weighing 152 kg, that’s what.
The Callaway Yamaha motor is an 80-valve special built by Reeves
Callaway, who made a reputation tuning Chevrolet Corvettes for high
performance and also helped Yamaha develop their five-valve cylinder head.
So it was a natural for him to see how many 1,000 cc Yamaha 20-valve top ends he could mate to a pair of crankshafts (answer = four, obviously).
The company’s website claims the motor is a prototype for a "future Callaway project," but we think they’re not telling the whole story. Can you spell "80-valve scoooter"? Of course not. Neither can we, but we’re looking forward to see what it eventually ends up in (hopefully not a skip).
You can hear all 80 valves running at the Callway website.
There was nothing “ill fated” about the SHO.
Indeed… Yamaha was also involved in the engine development of the Toyota 2000GT.
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/TOYOTA_2000GT.jpg/250px-TOYOTA_2000GT.jpg[/img]
That motor also looks a bit more sophisticated than the BRM H-16 (I suppose 40 years of advancements will do that :p )
Yamaha has a lot of experience in building automobile engines. If I’m not mistaken, it was Yamaha, while under contract to Ford, who built the engines for their ill-fated Taurus SHO back in the ’80’s.
Can you say BRM?