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.