I can’t say that jet skis, actually called Personal Watercraft because a Jet Ski is a Kawasaki brand name, enter my mind too often but today I learned about the 2021 Yamaha SuperJet from Mike Finnegan’s Instagram and find myself strangely entranced by this odd-looking mission-specific machine.
Stand-up watercraft are mainly used for racing (remember WaveRace 64?!) but I guess they could also be fun for general thrashing. It’s basically a Razor scooter for the water if a Razor scooter had like 100 horsepower.
The vibe, in my mind, is very ‘80s but clearly these things never really went away and must have enough of a following for Yamaha to bother cooking up a new one to re-up its competition against the Kawasaki SX-R, which is Kawi’s current stand-up offering.
The SuperJet is kind of extra strange because looks a little like a Star Wars stormtrooper accessory. Or maybe something that’d be fired out the back of a Tesla Cybertruck.
Here’s a quick clip of the SuperJet in action, though I recommend watching it with your sound off because the audio is jarringly awful:
Wacky!
The SuperJet lists for $9,499, undercutting the Kawasaki SX-R’s MSRP by about $500 though the Kawi boasts a 1498cc four-cylinder where the Yamaha runs a 1049cc TR-1 three-cylinder. I don’t know enough about watercraft propulsion to really understand how those different engines would feel on the water, but the SX-R will certainly have more scoot.
Real details on the SuperJet can be found Yamaha’s website, but mostly I’m just hoping Jalopnik readers will have some fun stand-up watercraft stories to share in the comments.
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