Introduced for the 2001 sales season, this Yamaha sport ATV marked a new chapter for the company’s recreational lineup. It arrived as a big-displacement machine aimed at riders who wanted more aggressive performance and a more focused sport-ATV character than the smaller, earlier Yamaha quads that had built the brand’s reputation. Yamaha’s own heritage materials describe it as a model that inherited the sporty attitude of the Blaster and Banshee era, while official technical material notes that it quickly gained a strong reputation in the U.S. market for versatility across very different riding environments, from dunes to wooded trails.
The nameplate became an important flagship in Yamaha’s sport-ATV range and helped define the brand’s image in that segment during the early 2000s. Yamaha refreshed it for the 2005 model year, showing that the platform remained a key part of the lineup even as the company continued to refine its performance ATV strategy. Later, Yamaha introduced the next-generation Raptor 700 series in 2005, which took over as the top-end sport model and effectively closed the chapter on the original 660 nameplate.
Enthusiast interest has remained strong because this was the model that established the modern Yamaha sport-quad formula for many riders. It is remembered as the original high-profile Raptor and as the machine that helped turn the Raptor name into a lasting performance badge in Yamaha’s ATV history.