The concept of the Yamaha Bolt is a little like that of the Yamaha MT line; value that's hard to ignore. The stripped-back cruiser has a decent engine to impart a degree of displacement credibility, and it also has a few more positive features than the obvious competition, that being the Harley Davidson 883 and the Kawasaki Vulcan 900.
Yamaha describes the Bolt as an 'urban performance cruiser', a mix of old school and new technology, though if we're honest we don't see a whole heap of the latter. For there's no ABS, no selectable engine maps and nothing much in the way of electronics. There are wavy discs which lower unsprung weight a bit, but mainly look more cool.
Even the Yamaha engine us not exactly new; it is borrowed from the V-Star 950, a custom cruiser, though in this new application it gets a revised intake and exhaust, and different engine tune for enhanced torque production at low revs. It's a little hard to know exactly how enhanced it is, given there's no tachometer but Yamaha quotes 51 horsepower at 5,500rpm and 80Nm of torque at 3,000rpm. You can short-shift through the five gears for effortless 100km/h cruising, and you can also ease about the burbs in fourth gear, though fifth is marginally too tall. By comparison, the Harley-Davidson 883 delivers 50 horsepower and 70Nm, and weighs around 30 kilograms more.