When I bought my wifes '04 Yamoto it was sold as a "Chinese Licensed Yamaha". The E-Bay ad said Yamoto was all approved and supported by Yamaha.

 

I'll bet Yamaha would like to have that information. Especially if you are able to document it.

 

I actually kept a copy of the E-Bay ad for a while, mainly because it was also supposedly a green sticker legal quad in Ca. That turned out to be BS too. But I did finally get it registered and tossed the copy in the trash. Im sure its somewhere in EBays archives.

 

Another reason women don't understand why men don't like to take out the trash.

It's a filing system.

China is just the worlds xerox machine. If something is selling well, a Chinese copy is sure to follow. Nothing any other industry has done so far has stopped them, and sadly, I doubt this lawsuit will have little impact. They will probably cite some obscure trade agreement that they didn't sign or another loophole somewhere. Yamaha may be able to claim victory in court, but the most that will probably happen is the color of the quads will change.

 

From what I understand Patrioit motors isnt really the bad guy in this deal, but bought a bunch of troubles from WinSpeed motors in Union City Ca. A guy named Jason was/is the origional importer of Yamoto's(winspeed) and from what I hear is still selling them in the US around the deal with Patriot motors.

 

Does anybody even know who makes Yamoto?

 

If I remember right it was covered in the many pages of the "Yamoto 150 Review" thread. I cant for the life of me remember who it was though.

 

Well, there is a lot of interesting tidbits that have occured through this lawsuit. As I have learned through my sources, Patriot Motorcycles has been found not at fault in this lawsuit and has been dropped as a defendant. The original supplier of these quads and motorcycles really messed things up, along with the proliferation of scooters, pocketbikes and mini choppers, a halt on the sale of any Chineese motor cycle/atv is in effect till it is sorted out.

Now as I understand it, the name Yamoto has been around for a very long time. The use of it does raise some eyebrows as it does ring of "Yamaha" however what is not mentioned is that the Yamoto logo is a centuries old symbol in Chineese society. Again, the fact that is resembles the 3 tuning fork symbol Yamaha uses probably is not a coincidence, but will probably be thrown out.

As for the styling of the quads, resembling the Raptor line, they have demonstrated that aside from the intake opening on the front of the quad, the rest of the body panels are as different as Honda is to Yamaha is to Suzuki. This will probably be the easist thing to change in this scenario.

As for interchangable parts, Yamoto aquired the blueprints to various engine and chassis components from Yamaha, and had they not looked and sounded similar to Yamaha, probably wouldn't be an issue. That said, the new crop of Yamoto quads have very different setups from Yamaha's current lineup, and that said, if you go to Pep-Boys, there is an exact copy from another Pan-Asian company of the Blaster aside from a different motor, the frame, suspension and plastic are identical.

As it stands, you will see, through more imput from Patriot, a complete re-vamping of the Yamoto line to clear the way for better and yes different ATV's. I feel that the name will remain the same, as will the Logo, but the look and quality should improve, as Patriot has already launched their Production Chopper line called Steed designed by famed custom chopper designer John Covington as well as a marine lineup of boats ranging 22' to I believe 42' to begin production in the next year, which were designed by former Glastron designer Art Carlson.

TPR