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coldtea

customer: hello, I want to buy a piano please

yamaha: sure, here you go

customer: great, thanks! lol, I also need a motorcycle. Do you know where I can buy a good one?

yamaha: you're not gonna believe this...

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Completely separate companies, both called Yamaha. One was spun off from the other, but I don't think there was ever a time when the same company sold both. (Basically, the musical instrument company was redirected to making war materiel during WWII. After the war, they didn't want to just throw away all of their new industrial capacity so they spun off a company to make use of all their new equipment and expertise and then went back to making instruments.)

The OG Yamaha produced a motorcycle in 1954, the YA-1. That success then led to the spin off.

(fun fact: the motorcycle Triumph and the undergarment Triumph are two entirely different companies that just happen to share the same name)

Triumph is also a garment brand? Never heard of it.

I had no idea you've never heard of it. Thanks for keeping us informed.

>I had no idea you've never heard of it. Thanks for keeping us informed.

I see.

In that case, you'll appreciate the fact that the Three Musketeers chocolate bar bears no relationship to Alexander Dumas, the author of the famed book series featuring D'Artagnan and three musketeers.

You might also be interested to learn that Zenit launch vehicles are not made by the organization that produces Zenit optics and cameras.

Most crucially, Lucky grocery store chain in California turns out to be completely different from the Korean Lucky chemical products and electronics conglomerate (known as "Lucky GoldStar" after merging its chem and electronics wings, and, currently, "LG").

The more you know!

It’s also a Wonder Dog, a Canadian power trio not featuring Neal Peart, and a moment when we shouldn’t evacuate the Death Star.

> Wonder Dog

I think you meant Insult Comic Dog.

I guess we were too good at Triumphing…

A motorcycle named Norton Commander also exists, and Nokia* sold winter bicycle tires with studs on them so they would grip better on ice and snow.

Nokian studded tires for bicycles are (were?) the best! Rode many-many kilometers at winter with them!

Not sure about the meaning of your asterisk, but the Nokian Tyres corporation is not related to Nokia the telecoms co, other than being founded in the same town.

Nokia did manufacture rubber boots though, before they spun off the footwear division in 1990 and went all in on electronics.

The company's history page says they were part of the merger in 1967 that created "Big Nokia": https://company.nokiantyres.com/about-us/history/#:~:text=19...

This changed in 1988 with the formation of an LLC, in 1995 they went public and in 2003 shares still held by the parent company were sold off to Bridgestone.

Although the Yamaha that makes music and audio products is the same Yamaha that makes golf clubs (https://global.golf.yamaha.com/en/) and industrial equipment (https://www.yamahafinetech.co.jp/en/).

Same company

They may have “different legal entities” but it’s the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Corporation

Yeah, that's one of them. Here's the other:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Motor_Company

It even says in your link "The former motorcycle division was established in 1955 as Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., which started as an affiliated company but has been spun-off as its own independent company. "

I didn't realize when I was a kid that the Yamaha music company came first.

I remember being confused when looking at high end saxophones that one was made by an old French company (that made sense, France makes many fine luxury goods including instruments) and the other was (in my mind) made by a motorcycle company. How could a motorcycle company possibly have compiled the expertise to make high end musical instruments when most musical instrument companies were chasing the low end of the market at the time?

But Yamaha music (1887) was started only 2 years after Selmer (1885). They got their start making reed organs. Reed organs (1) are technical, (2) make sound with reeds, and (3) are luxury items. So their expertise in sax (a reed instrument) and synthesizers (technical keyboard instruments) makes a ton of sense.

Day Start proekror proom

I love Yamaha Motor using the tuning forks as their logo. It's a proper beautiful old-timey logo (well, from 1967, apparently, but anyway) and it's just so weird seeing them on a motorcycle.

https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/history/logo/

Just pretend it is the thing that hold the front wheel.

Coincidentally also called a fork/forks :)

Apparently they also make network switches. I guess it is in support of their computerized audio equipment. but I was a bit surprised when they showed up in a search result.

https://usa.yamaha.com/products/proaudio/network_switches/in...

They have the technical capability to design one, but on the surface it is enough outside their core product line that I wonder if it is a oem rebadge.

Huh, thanks for sharing. Funny to see the switches in the same color scheme as some of their receivers.

They claim that they're developing routers since 1995 and they're used widely in domestic Japan (SME and SOHO).

Looks like switches came in 2011 and there's some secret sauce which makes them autoconfigure each-other to reduce networking setup.

It might not be a standard OEM stuff.

Citing the page:

> Yamaha entered the router business in 1995, and has grown to hold a significant share of Japan’s small to medium enterprise and SOHO network market. Yamaha gigabit L2 switches that could be linked to Yamaha routers/firewalls were introduced in 2011, with features that significantly reduced the network setup, maintenance, and management workload.

They make Dante licenced products.

I don't think Yamaha Motor is producing any large trucks. They do a lot of things but mostly motorcycles, atv, boat engine, even car engines but not the whole car.

Also, you should note that Yamaha Corporation, the musical instrument maker and Yamaha Motor are now 2 distinct independent companies, even if were originally part of the same group.

They are independent yes, but originally the motor company was an affiliate spin-off. They do have an agreement and share the same logo, and Yamaha Corporation has some shares in the Motor one tho.

a former keiretsu?

Former, current, reformed keiretsu?

> but not the whole car

They actually made at least one model, of which only 3 prototypes were built before the project was cancelled due to the economic situation at the time: the Yamaha OX99-11 supercar was using a detuned version of their formula one v12 engine when they switched to v10. I guess they had built to many of them?