SR Meaning?

The project to develop the XT was headed by Shunji Tanaka, who dubbed the bike 'single roadster' or SR. OK I'm writing an article with a brief history of the origins of the SR, hence I've done a bit of scratching around.
Wikipedia isn't the best tool for research and the article on there is two mashed together without any credit given to the orginal authors! I may go in there and straighten it out and reference it correctly, if I can be arsed

Not to dispute the Tanaka version of "Single Roadster;" if Tanaka said that, then he would know, but...

The Japanese, however, are notoriously quirky with the names they put on products. In Japan I used to own a Honda Eve Smile. How's that for a manly set of wheels?

In the late 80s Toyota brought out a line of tiny cars for the domestic market named after vegetables: the Toyota Celery, Carrot, and I can't remember the others. My neighbor had a Celery. The Isuzu SUV sold in the U.S. as the Rodeo was marketed in Japan as the Mu — the sound cows make.

Toyota also used SR for the better equipped models, and Toyota says this means "Sports Refined."

My own guess is that SR came into use in shameless immitation of the Mercedes SL, which in the 70s and 80s was the prestige car in Japan, and was thought to be both sporty and luxurious. Japanese has neither an "r" nor "l" sound, but rather a consonant that falls somewhere in between, so in Japanese the pronunciation of SR and SL is indistinguishable.

In the old days Japanese manufacturers could be shameless in their immitation of competing products, so if "SR" did come from "SL" it would be very difficult to get any corporate admission of that now. Remember, one of the never ending controversies in Japan is the rewriting of history books to save everyone embarassment. (That goes on other place too.)

I had an SR in Japan and had Japanese friends with them, and I can't remember anyone calling them an "SR." Instead they were called a "Big Single." (Pronounced "big shingle" in Japanese.) Yamaha itself advertised them as Big Singles and meant for them to evoke BSAs.

There was much written in Japanese bike magazines of the time about the makers turning out old-fashioned British-looking bikes in the 70s and 80s. The general view was this reflected a longing to enjoy the 50s and 60s the Japanese saw in the movies but were too poor to afford themselves in the decades after WWII. I remember one Japanese writer describing the mood (in irony) as a nostalgia for a past they never had.

aero, you seem to have a good sense of how history is made. Maybe it's living there in Cambridge. Just heard a few days ago on Shakespeare's birthday that it might not be his birthday afterall. How are simple guys like me to get anywhere if we're always learning facts that might not be factual. To me both "Single Roadster" and "Sports Refined" are so awkward they could only have been made up after the fact.

Also, Yamaha turned out at least 4 SRs, a 185, 250, 400, 500, and then the 600 that broke the mold. If the design team took "roadster" to mean a bike meant for the open road, and not a two-seater open car without roll-up windows, then none of the bikes (especially the small ones) fit the bill. There's at least one guy here in Minnesota who I understand did the Iron Butt Run — which is long distance riding — on an SR, but not many would want to take that kind of beating or call an SR a "roadster."

Not arguing. Just some thoughts that came to me reading this. And you're right, Tanaka had no way of knowing he was designing a classic or maybe more thought would have gone into the name. We could all be riding BS-500s (British Singles, with marques on the tanks like BSAs, but missing the A.)

Heh, heh...SR...hmmm, not sure but I like it anyway...

SR