Engine manufacturer

Yanmar

Yanmar is a Japanese engine and machinery maker, founded in Osaka in 1912 by Magokichi Yamaoka, that in 1933 built what it describes as the first practical small diesel engine. Its recreational marine arm, Yanmar Marine International in Almere, the Netherlands, sells diesel engines, saildrives, the ZT370 sterndrive and Kanzaki and ZF gears for sailing and power boats.

Yanmar traces its origins to March 1912, when Magokichi Yamaoka set up the Yamaoka Hatsudoki Kosakusho in Osaka to repair and sell gas engines. In December 1933 the company completed the HB, a 5 hp horizontal water-cooled diesel that Yanmar describes as the world's first practical small diesel engine; small diesels for fishing boats became one of its core businesses after the war. The group's parent today is Yanmar Holdings Co., Ltd., based in Osaka. Yanmar entered the leisure market with engines for export sailboats: the YS8 and YS12 in 1971, the YA and YC in 1976, and the vertical water-cooled 2QM20 and 3QM30 in the same year. The GM series (1980) and the direct-injection JH series (1985) followed; in 1983 Yanmar sold more than 10,000 pleasure-boat engines each in Europe and in America, and in 1989 deliveries to the French builder Jeanneau passed 10,000. The later sailboat ranges are the YM series and the common-rail JH engines, which Yanmar still sells alongside the single-cylinder 1GM10. For powerboats Yanmar launched the 4LH series in 1987, the six-cylinder 6LY in 1991 and the 6LP series, based on Toyota automotive engines, in 1996. The BY series of 2006 onwards used four- and six-cylinder diesels supplied by BMW under a 2005 agreement. The current powerboat ranges are the common-rail 4LV and the 8LV V8 (introduced in 2011), with the 6LY-CR, 6LF and 6LT at the top. Yanmar's recreational marine business is run from Almere in the Netherlands, where Yanmar Europe was founded in 1988 and opened a small marine engine assembly plant in 1997. Yanmar Marine International was set up there in July 2002 and started trading in January 2003 as the company responsible for Yanmar's worldwide pleasure-boat engine business, including development and production decisions. It now heads Yanmar's Recreational Marine business unit, which also includes VETUS (part of the Yanmar Group since 1 January 2013, with its Maxwell anchoring brand), the Danish folding-propeller maker Flexofold (acquired in 2017) and the gyro-stabiliser maker Smartgyro, in which Yanmar took a majority stake in 2020. Yanmar has built saildrives since at least the mid-1980s. The SD20, SD30 and SD31 served the GM and JH2 engines; the cone-clutch SD40 and SD50 followed on the JH3, JH4 and JH5 engines; and the current range is the SD25 (2015), the multi-plate-clutch SD60, and the hydraulic-shift SD110 and SD150 for large yachts and catamarans. Yanmar's December 2021 datasheet for the SD15, the SD110's earlier name, describes it as built by ZF. Yanmar also offers the electric SDe saildrives. Shaft gears come from Kanzaki Kokyukoki, a company founded by Magokichi Yamaoka in 1947 that took over Yanmar's marine gear business in 2003, and from ZF. For sterndrives Yanmar at first had no leg of its own. From November 1996 it sold its Toyota-based 6LP engines with drive units supplied by MerCruiser, and MerCruiser Bravo legs remained an option on later 6LPA and BY engines. Yanmar introduced its own ZT350 sterndrive in 2008-2009, with a hydraulic clutch and counter-rotating propellers, for the BY and LP engines. It was replaced in 2011 by the ZT370, launched with the 8LV and later also sold with the 4LV sterndrive models. Twin ZT370 installations can use Yanmar's JC10 joystick system. In the late 2000s Yanmar also offered ZF Pod and Zeus pod drives, developed with ZF Marine, for its larger diesels. Earlier, in 1978, Yanmar had developed the SZ60 Z-drive for Japanese diesel work boats, and used it in 1980 in its first pleasure boat, the Marine Hunter FZ22.