Yamaha Motors Japan recently announced plans to offer a new Ténéré 700 Low option at the end of March 2025. That's great news for customers in Japan, because it's generally good news when more Low and Tall seat options are available. I'm not a marketing wonk, but to my mind, the math is simple: More fitment options should, at least in theory, equal more people of all leg lengths on bikes.
The thing is, of course, that those riders need to know that these options are available to them. I'd also argue that it isn't enough to merely make Low and Tall seat options available as accessories for bikes; that OEMs should also bring those Low and Tall options to their demo events, so real-life riders can throw a leg over and experience what a difference that extra attention to rider fitment can make. But I digress (and I've expanded on this at length elsewhere).
What if you're in markets outside Japan, though, and you might be interested in a Yamaha Ténéré 700 Low? There's good news for you as well, because Yamaha already offers both a low seat option and an official lowering kit (yay rear suspension dogbone) option straight from the factory.
If you live in the US, our Ténéré 700 Lowering Kit is currently listed in the Yamaha catalog at a cost of US $114.99, for all 2021 through 2024 model bikes. On its own, this kit lowers the ride height by 18mm (about 0.7 inches, for those of you measuring in football fields and cheeseburger units).
The US pricing for the Ténéré 700 Low Seat is currently set at US $129.99, and also fits all 2021 through 2024 model year bikes. It lowers the seat height by 20mm (or about 0.79 inches).
What does that do to the seat height of your 2021 through 2024 T7, if you install both of these Low accessories? Stock seat height is 34.4 inches with both the standard seat and suspension settings. Moving to the Low seat and Lowering Kit knocks the total seat height down to 835.76mm, which is about 32.9 inches.
That's quite a bit more accessible than 34.4 inches, particularly for those of us riders with shorter inseams. In fact, for comparison, that's the standard seat height for the XSR700, and it's just 0.4 inches taller than the stock seat height for the MT-09 SP.
Now, someone will inevitably point out that adventure bikes (and dirt bikes) tend to have taller seat heights because you need more room for your suspension to do its thing off road. But as OEMs have certainly noticed since the rise of ADV bikes began, there are plenty of folks who choose to keep their ADV bikes mostly on pavement. It might be a compromise in terms of off-road performance, but the real question is whether the person buying the bike finds that compromise to be an acceptable one.
And if you're a shorter rider, and you've dreamed of a T7, it might just be what you need for your particular situation. You know better than the naysayers, so cheers to Yamaha for not counting us little people out of the ADV life.
