Yamaha Motor U.S.A. absorbs Yamaha Motor Canada

By
CMG Staff
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Yamaha's Canadian arm is now a U.S.-based subsidiary.
Yamaha's Canadian arm is now a U.S.-based subsidiary.

Yamaha is turning its Canadian presence into a U.S. subsidiary, but say consumers and dealers won’t be affected.

According to a news release on their global website, Yamaha Motor Canada, founded all the way back in 1973, will have all their shares transferred to Yamaha Motor U.S.A., starting December 1. The transaction should be completed by the end of that month.

Now, Yamaha Motor Canada will join  other Yamaha Motor U.S.A. subsidiaries, such as boatbuilders Skeeter Products or Tennessee Water Craft. There will be 10 subsidiaries in total.

Supposedly, this will allow the company to operate more efficiently and draw a centralized financial report, as Yamaha Europe, Yamaha Asia, and Yamaha South America subsidiaries do.

Yamaha Canada says this is simply a business arrangement that won’t impact their organizational structure, and they’ll maintain all their current responsibilities towards dealers and customers. That means everybody who was hoping for American pricing on motorcycles is probably out of luck.

Yamaha isn’t the first company to try this; Ducati and Triumph have been running a North American business model for years, and they have plenty of fans up here still.

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1 COMMENT

  1. Yamaha Canada Sucks, Especially with their Motorcycle`s the V-Star 1100 has a long history of problems with the Starter one way clutch berings both in the US & Canada they are well aware of this ongoing problem. In 2010 Yamaha came up with a solution by offering a Starter one way bering kit with two new parts, so anyone getting their Motorcycle fixed in 2010 or after should be ok. However, if you had your bike fixed prior to 2010 ( in 2009 for example ) I being one are stuck with the old repacement parts and are likely to have the same problem with the Starter one way clutch again. Unlike its US counter part Yamaha Canada is making their customers pay for the new kit ( ie, Parts and Labour ) Whereas in the US they are ( at least ) providing the parts .

  2. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of banter about the prices, I too would like to see a little more parity, but when it all comes down to it, I don’t really think it’s going to matter.
    It’s business, and even though the customer is always right, the shareholders are the ones that must be appeased.

    Why does it cost that much?  Because that’s what the customer will pay.  “If profit projections aren’t met, the prices must go up.”

    Personally, if you’re making a profit, you’re doing well…  Too much of the entire worlds economy is based on what rich folk think…  if a butterfly farts in Africa, the price of gas goes up because it might cause a typhoon in the pacific, which will interupt the humidity in the mountains of Peru, causing a decline in the coffee production which makes one of the oil rig foremen grumpy so production will fall off by 1/54 of a barrel per hour…

    FACK!!!Congrats, or condolences to Yamaha.

  3. Yeah, we can always hope. I’m still not whether that the current price discrepancies actually reflects high prices for Canada, or the weak value of the US dollar against the Yen, which has not been fully passed on to US consumers yet – who would probably go into price shock if the full drop in the USD vs the Yen was immediately passed along.

    Probably a little of both, given that even vehicles made in Canada or the US are typically priced a good 25% (or more) higher in Canada than the US.

  4. The only change I can forsee is that now, we might actually see Yamaha’s Canada’s retail and dealer prices more accurately reflect their US prices. By becoming a direct subsidiary of the US distributor, the Canadian importer loses that old (bullshit) excuse of having to pay more for their bikes than the US does. Here’s hoping!

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