Oh, man! This again!
There's no pleasing some of you guys! Sure, we've done four glowing Yamaha reviews in a row...but three were for the SAME product-- the Roadliner intro, the "Three R" comparo (with the Roadliner again!) and this one.
As for the R6 before it, well, it's a really good motorcycle. It was top pick for plenty of other magazines.
We've reviewed over 70 motorcycles this year. Most of them we've liked! Some we didn't. It shouldn't seem strange when we like four bikes in a row from the same brand- there's only six brands we spend 95% of our time on (and that represent 97% of sales nationally.)
By the way, we didn't report very favorably on the Triumph Rocket III, but they advertise on this site. So does Ducati.
Just because a brand does well four tests in a row doesn't mean they have a "special relationship" with us. If I was a sports reporter and I reported the Dolphins won four games in a row would that mean the Dolphins were giving us free celebrity rub-downs in the Dolphin's locker room?
If the test was for some of Yamaha's not-so-good bikes, like the YZF600R (which was last in our Value Supersport story), or the V-star 650 (yich!), they wouldn't have come out on top.