This Forgotten Yamaha Was A Tiny Barbie-Pink Motorcycle Marketed ‘For Ladies Only’

Every once in a while, a motorcycle manufacturer decides that it wants to lean hard on targeting a single group with a new motorcycle. Honda has repeatedly built motorcycles for people who don’t ride, and there have even been designs specifically for people who drive cars. One demographic that many motorcycle companies have wanted to break into is women. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Yamaha tried to get women to ride by building what it thought were the perfect bikes for women, which came complete with Barbie-pink paint and tassels. This is the story of the 1960s Yamaha Lady and the 1970s Passol.

For decades, motorcycling was seen as an activity mainly for men. There had even been ugly assumptions and stereotypes involving women and motorcycles. Thankfully, times are much different today. Depending on who you ask, 14 percent to 19 percent of all motorcycle riders in America are women, which is great! Everyone should enjoy the thrill of two wheels if they want to!

Today, there are also massive organizations like Women Riders Now who are dedicated to being a welcoming entry point for women wanting to ride. Meanwhile, there’s also the Motor Maids, one of America’s oldest women motorcycle clubs, which dates back to 1946.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the environment was different. Riding had the image of mean biker dudes who rode choppers and caused trouble. As USA Today notes, women motorcyclists in the United States didn’t even hit 10 percent of total riders until the late 2000s, so seeing a woman on a bike back in the ’60s was truly rare. However, some motorcycle manufacturers saw a benefit in attracting women to bikes. Yamaha was one of these motorcycle manufacturers, and it put forth two notable efforts in getting women to ride motorcycles. Its idea? Make motorcycles that are cuter and easier to ride.

Moto Mate

The first bike that we know of that Yamaha marketed directly to women was the Lady Yamaha, which was based on the Yamaha Mate series. Underbone motorcycles were incredibly popular in Japan in the 1960s, in part thanks to the runaway success of the iconic 1958 Honda Super Cub. Understandably, seemingly every moto maker in Japan wanted a slice of the success baked by Honda.

In case you are curious, an underbone typically consists of a low-slung steel frame with a step-through design, often absurdly narrow tires, and plastic fairings that offer minimal wind protection. While not super common here in the States, you’ll find these motorcycles all over the developing world and throughout Asia.

Yamaha’s answer to the Super Cub came in 1960 with the MF-1. Then came the MJ-2 in 1962, which was similar to the MF-1, but with a bigger engine. When it came time to make a third version, Yamaha wanted to go big. Yamaha tells its story of the motorcycle that became the Mate:

“I’m riding, I’m riding, I’m riding, I’m riding…a Yamaha Mate!”—In the mid-1960s, Yamaha debuted a new moped, the Mate, along with a TV commercial for it featuring a catchy jingle. The commercial made Yamaha a household name throughout the country. Small, moped-style motorcycles were known as a practical means of transport, good for delivering packages and running other errands, and the market for them had exhibited stable growth. The new Yamaha Mate series was developed through the concerted efforts of the engineering team. Two models debuted on the market in July 1965, the 50 cc Yamaha U5 Mate and U5D Mate. Another version, the 73 cc U7 Mate, was launched in December that same year.

Yamaha’s Marketing Department tried a completely new approach to promoting the Mate before its launch. The department conducted a campaign to name the moped in order to fully promote its appeal, soliciting ideas from both inside and outside the company. The campaign generated a flood of responses as some 215,000 suggestions poured in. “Forte,” “Mate,” “Doll,” and “Pal” were selected as finalists, and after a rigorous judging process, the now familiar “Mate” was chosen.

A famous songwriter was asked to write the jingle for the Mate’s initial commercial.
The limited advertising budget meant only the first verse of the song could be completed, so the staff took it upon themselves to do the second and third, with some assistance from the advertising company. The synergies of coupling the resulting song with the TV commercial shot in 1967 showing a chimpanzee riding a Mate resulted in the song being widely sung by children and adults alike.

The Mate would be produced in several variants, including the extremely rare U7E in my garage, the U5 Newport 50, and the U5E. The U5E features a 49cc two-stroke 4.5 HP rotary valve single, an autolube oil mixer, a six volt electrical system, and a three-speed semi-automatic transmission. Yamaha was quite proud of its electric starters in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, the bike’s electric start was a huge part of its marketing. Like many two-strokes, the bike still had a kick start as an alternate starting method.

The idea of marketing to women also wasn’t that new of a concept. The Yamaha U5E Newport 50 was marketed to women. Promotional materials prominently featured women straddling Yamaha underbones and having a good time. One of Honda’s most famous marketing campaigns depicted a diverse cast of people riding all kinds of Super Cubs.

For Ladies Only

However, those bikes weren’t exactly made to directly appeal to women, and, as I noted earlier, there just wasn’t a high percentage of women in the motorcycle world back then. To try to fix that, Yamaha took the U5E and turned it into the Yamaha Lady.

There weren’t many changes made to the U5E to make it into a Pink Lady. Yamaha gave the U5E a basket, a seat with tassels, and custom graphics, then wrapped it up in bright pink paint. Everything else was the same, from the tiny two-stroke engine to the electric start. Yamaha then sent the Pink Lady out with marketing, calling the motorcycle “For Women Only.” While it’s hard to find exact data, it appears that the Pink Lady went on sale in 1965 or 1966.

What was fascinating was that Yamaha didn’t market these motorbikes to just every woman, but specifically teenagers. According to Cycle News, in 1968, Miss Cindy LaCroix, a fashion model who had appeared on the cover of Motorcyclist magazine and Lens Magazine, rode onto the stage of the “From the Missions to the Stars” teen fashion show in California on a Lady Yamaha.

Then things got a bit wilder. In 1969, Cycle News wrote about how Yamaha started giving out Lady Yamaha bikes out to the winners of teen beauty and teen bikini pageants. One of these winners was 17-year-old Kristina Nelson, a high school junior who was crowned the queen of the Third International Bikini-Beauty Pageant. Cycle News said: When not modeling or motorcycle riding, the beautiful young queen occupies her time with Karate lessons.

At the time, the Lady Yamaha (nicknamed the Pink Lady) was marketed as the only motorcycle on the American market that was built with women in mind. Was it a success? Hard to say. Yamaha has not kept great records about Mate sales in America. It wasn’t even able to give me a ballpark figure on sales of the U7E. What I can say is that the Lady Yamaha was a short-lived product that didn’t appear to last much longer than 1969 or so.

Perhaps what’s even weirder is that, not even a decade later, Yamaha took another swing at the whole bikes-for-women thing.

For Ladies Only, Again

Yamaha says that in the 1970s, it expected the motorcycle market to expand with the addition of new female riders. However, there weren’t really motorcycles built just for women. Yamaha thought that women would love to ride motorcycles while wearing skirts and dresses. However, this wasn’t easily possible with existing bikes because a long skirt or dress might get caught up in a chain or brake. Likewise, Yamaha felt that one thing women wouldn’t like about typical bikes was the oily, smoky engine dirtying their skirts and dresses.

So, Yamaha wanted to market to women again. But this time, the brand wouldn’t just paint a bike pink and call it a day.

From Yamaha:

The Passol was easy to ride thanks to bicycle-style handbrakes for the front and rear wheels and an automatic transmission. It also featured a kick starter that would start the engine the first try, as well as cast wheels. The seat height was a low 680 millimeters, the moped’s total length was 1,515 millimeters, and it weighed only 45 kilograms. Being compact and lightweight made it easy for women to handle. The Passol was also economical, traveling 75 kilometers on one liter of fuel, and would help establish the “soft bike” as a new genre of motorcycles.

Yamaha succeeded in commercializing the Passol precisely because it had the technical development capability to create a product plan that prioritized design. The company developed a small forced-air engine and a single-speed automatic transmission compatible with the Passol’s compact design. It also developed a pipe frame structure, cast wheels, plastic covers, and other features that met strength standards. The cooperation of the technical departments, which worked resolutely on developing new technologies, made it possible to establish this new category of scooter.

Equipped with these numerous features, the Passol went on sale in March 1977. Actress Kaoru Yachigusa was employed as the face of the Passol as Yamaha launched a large-scale promotional campaign, including television commercials, with the catch phrase “I like it because it’s gentle (easy).” The company aggressively engaged in sales promotions, holding exhibits and test riding events at places frequented by large numbers of people, such as supermarkets and department stores. At the same time, the company also held Yamaha Moped License Schools. These activities resulted in Yamaha increasing its share of the market for family-oriented motorcycles.

The Passol was an interesting little ride. Yamaha called it a motorcycle in official documentation, but it was really more like a scooter. The Passol features a step-through design with a floorboard, a 49cc 2.27 HP two-stroke engine, drum brakes, and bicycle-style levers.

Yamaha says that the Passol was successful enough that in 1978, it launched the Passola, a Passol with 0.5 more HP, an automatic choke, a fuel gauge, and an autolube container oil level warning light. According to Yamaha, the Passol was ¥69,800 while the Passola was ¥89,800. Sadly, neither the Passol nor the Passola crossed the Pacific to the United States.

The Passol was revived in 2001, not exactly as a bike specifically for women, but as an innovative early electric scooter with 20 miles of range, a 0.78 HP motor, and a weight of only 97 pounds.

Odd And Forgotten

Ultimately, neither of these efforts lasted particularly long. While there has never been an official explanation, there could be several factors as to why building motorcycles specifically for women didn’t really work out. Of course, these motorcycle manufacturers had to overcome the idea that motorcycles were a male thing. A lot of the American women who do ride often add their own feminine touches to existing larger motorcycle designs. The late National Motorcycle Museum suggests that the women riders of the 1960s and the 1970s did the same. Today, rides like the Can-Am Ryker and Honda Navi have a lot of women owners, and they were not specifically designed for women.

If you’re like me and you’re a sucker for pink, I do have somewhat bad news. The Lady Yamaha is believed to be super rare, and I did not find any currently for sale. These bikes do show up from time to time for sale and thankfully, the rarity doesn’t seem to suggest value. The last Lady Yamaha sold on Bring a Trailer went for only $1,500. A nicer version went for only $5,250.

Whatever the reason, these two efforts didn’t last very long; they now live on in history as a couple of those weird times when a motorcycle manufacturer tried to have a laser focus on a very specific market. Yamaha wasn’t the first to market to women, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. But at the very least, if you’re into pink and vintage bikes like I am, maybe Barbie’s vintage Yamaha might be your jam.