Another season goes by, another cool variant of the Yamaha Tenere 700 that we won’t get in North America. This time, it’s the Yamaha Tenere 700 Extreme with updated suspension. It was just announced today in Europe.

The big update for this bike is a KYB upside-down fork with full adjustability and a Kashima coating that’s supposed to make the bike’s suspension handle better at low speed (more on Kashima coatinghere—basically, it’s a hard coating combined with a lubricant). Yamaha added 20 mm of suspension travel to give the fork 230 mm of travel in total. The rear also gets 20 mm more travel, thanks to a new KYB shock that is also fully-adjustable.

Jacking the bike up front and rear makes for 260 mm of ground clearance with the updated T7, and seat height is now 910 mm. Basically, with the Extreme, you’re getting the suspension from the World Raid version of the bike, but without some of the other gadgets that hike the price. There are a few other minor add-ons; titanium footpegs, an aluminum bash plate, rad guard and chain protector. The front fender is raised for more clearance, and the TFT screen now has a mode that operates as a digital rally raid-style roadbook.

Makes sense! More and more, this class of bikes is being pressed into duty for amateur or even pro rally raid events, particularly in Europe and Africa. A built-in roadbook will make their life easier.

Other changes to the bike include gold-colored spokes and a new blue paint job. Asking price depends which Euro market you’re in, and at this point, we have heard of no plan to bring the bike to the States. Like the rest of these special-run T7 models, they’re made in Europe by European,s for Europeans. Our NA-market models come from Japan, where they don’t seem too interested in cranking out lots of sub-models.