As we get closer to Halloween 2020, Yamaha, at least, looks to have some kind of treat in store for us soon. Right now, though, they’re just teasing it and leaving us to guess at what it might be. Yamaha Motor USA posted this short clip on both its YouTube and Instagram and it sure is something. How much can 24 seconds tell you? 

The English-language captions in both places simply read “The darkness just got more exciting. Get ready for the coming weeks. #DarkSideOfJapan #HyperNaked” While you do see Japanese text flicker by in the video, it’s just Yamaha’s tagline for the MT line, the Dark Side of Japan. No real help, there, even if you can read it. What is it, though?  

Is it the updated MT-09 we’ve been expecting? That’s entirely possible, and maybe even likely—the MT-09 is quite popular, and a Euro 5-compliant version has been expected for some time now. As Sabrina wrote in September, fierce official document digging into German Federal Motor Transport Authority paperwork yielded mentions of a mysterious “MTN890D.” That’s meaningful because the MT-09 as we currently know it went by “MTN850,” which makes sense given the bike’s displacement.  

The teaser appears to be a sort of MT Rorschach test, since viewers are mostly seeing what they want to see. More European-based viewers seem to see an MT-09, while more U.S.-based viewers seem to see an MT-07 in the small bits of video as they flash by. What about the MT-10?  

Since Yamaha U.S. says “get ready for the coming weeks,” that seems indicative of more than one announcement. Given the totality of what we know, it seems likely that Yamaha will space out its impending MT introductions, perhaps giving us one per week so we have time to digest each one.  

If that proves to be the case, could it be indicative of more significant changes than just Euro 5 compliance and/or a few new paint schemes? Most OEMs flood our senses with a whole catalog of bikes where not much has changed when, well, not much has changed. However, they’re perfectly happy to stretch time out like taffy when they want to show us every facet of either heavily updated or brand-new models.  

Only time will tell us which situation we’re seeing here, but like that crispy crunch of fallen leaves underfoot, we can’t wait to see (and hear) it. 

Sources: YouTube, Moto.ITInstagram 

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