Yamaha MT-03 May Not Be Launched in India

Yamaha has no plans of launching the MT-03 in India, a source close to Yamaha India has disclosed to carandbike.com. The MT-03, a naked version of the Yamaha YZF-R3, was showcased at the 2016 Auto Expo, along with its bigger sibling, the Yamaha MT-09.

The source has clarified to carandbike.com that this year there are no plans at Yamaha to launch any more products and the MT-03 is not among the products planned at Yamaha India. For 2017, so far, there are no concrete product launch plans, he added.

(Yamaha MT-03)

The MT-03 shares the same engine as the R3, a 321cc parallel-twin engine which makes around 40bhp power and 29.Nm of torque. Launched in August 2015, at Rs 3.25 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi), the YZF-R3 has failed to set the sales registers on fire.

While Yamaha maintains that the R3 meets Yamaha's sales expectations, the fact is that the R3 has been unable to clock volumes in the middleweight performance segment, a segment led by the KTM RC 390. While India has always been a market where full-faired sportbikes are preferred over their naked counterparts, Yamaha India, for now, seems to have no plans of introducing a naked version of the R3, that too at no significant cost advantage for the buyer.