3rd seat
Yes.Yamaha touts the Viking as having the only “true” three-person seating on the market; instead of a bench seat, there are three individual bucket seats placed in the cab with the center seat’s backrest offset slightly at the rear of the vehicle.
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This should give more shoulder room to everyone on the Viking. The seat height is low, so your center of gravity should be much lower. The seats are reclined for easy in-and-out, and the seatbelts are fitted properly so each person has one, and connected to the floorboards.
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The Viking is truly a machine made for play and for work time, and can carry 600 pounds of capacity, and can tie down many different sizes of loads. With a dual a-arm suspension, and with disc brakes, the Viking has amazing power and feel when you ride it.
Yamaha believes that the 2014 has the best off-road capability in the class thanks to its ground clearance, great traction from Big Horn tires, and a 686cc engine. The tranny is a dual-range drive, and is a CVT. You can choose between a 2WD, limited slip 4WD and 4WD drive mode. The LCD contains all your trip information, hour meter, 4wd status, odometer, and more.
As dealers receive the Yamaha Viking, you will be hard pressed to find a better utility vehicle for your every day work and play.
Interestingly, there's a lot of complaints from the social community about the Viking. Comments like: “The sport market is dead. If you guys actually saw the market shares you would see for yourselves that, yeah, they are cool, but aren’t huge sellers. I would take this same power plant that is reliable over any Polaris any day … I am disappointed they didn’t come out with a bigger [engine], but that is the only downside to this machine.” were found on Facebook shortly after the Viking's release. This is perhaps the first time that Yamaha has had such a negative reaction on a new UTV launch, usually winning over the crowd. Given their sales figures in 2012 (which were, in short, awful), the Viking is their chance to take back market share and get customers to buy in to Yamaha in the ATV space again.
