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Yamaha Motor Revs Your Heart

Performance Dampers

History

Development of Performance Dampers started by focusing on “chassis viscosity” during the development of a high-performance chassis.

History

The roots of Performance Dampers lie in the history of engine development by Yamaha.
Yamaha has been contributing to OEM development and production of high-performance engines for many years. In the process of engine development, our engineers focused on the importance of “chassis technology that can handle high-performance engines”.
The first product created through this process was REAS (Relative Absorber System), which connects the left and right shock absorbers in order to improve handling stability and ride comfort. We further developed REAS into X-REAS, which connects shock absorbers on the diagonal. As engine performance improved, we developed chassis product in the direction of increasing body stiffness in order to suppress vibration (shaking) of the car body when driving at high speed. However, a test driver conducting high-speed driving tests came to an inspiring realization that would change the direction of development significantly. That realization was the basic principle of Performance Dampers, “In order to eliminate vibration of the body and enables comfortable driving, we should focus on ‘chassis viscosity’ rather than chassis stiffness.”
This was the beginning of development of Performance Dampers. What started as a simple bar, as shown in the photo, was developed into its modern form by combining the bar with a dedicated hydraulic damper through a rubber sandwich structure.

History

Before development of Performance Dampers

1989 Started development of chassis technology that can handle Yamaha’s high-performance engines
1991 Started development of REAS (Relative Absorber System)
1997 REAS adopted in the Toyota Supra
2000 REAS adopted in the Toyota Hilux Surf
2001 X-REAS adopted in the Toyota Crown Athlete VX, and later expanded to the Audi RS6 and the Toyota 4Runner

Idea for Performance Dampers

1999 As REAS and X-REAS evolved and matured, there appeared to be a limit on high performance using only Suspension Dampers
Early 2000 Yamaha started research and development on chassis stiffness, but could not make progress as expected. From driving images, we hypothesized that not chassis stiffness but "adding a damping" is the key.
Late 2000 The results of experiments not only proved the hypothesis, but also realized the unexpectedly high quality.

Development and production of Performance Dampers

2001 Equipped and launched in the Toyota Crown Athlete VX
2011 Used in the Lexus CT200h
2016 Cumulative production reaches 1 million
2020 Cumulative production reaches 2 million

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