Hounddog wrote:
With the world wide web network people now can read and learn about the outboard companies like Yamaha and Tohatsu. Until the web in the 1990's we in Ontario thought OMC and Mercury where the biggest outboard companies. In fact world wide, yamaha was much larger and Tohatsu was large then and likely now the largest outboard manufacturer. Was Yamaha outboard a copy cat OMC manufacturer for some of their motors.......YUP!!. When the law suit finally got to court they gladly paid the penalty...... saying best RND they could get for the money. To-day Yamaha is up near the top in everything they manufacture and are well known and respected here compared to the 1980's.
R&D at yamaha used to stand for "rip-off and Develop" lol. They did that in the beginning with a Seadoo too...then quickly realized it was a total piece of shit and started fresh lol.
There were many Suzuki and yamaha powered Canadian Editions back in the 80's. The biggest issue "pre-web" was all the Merc guys thought they were fast lol....not much has changed actually.