[Leica] Yasuhara Leica Clone [Vaporware?]

["R. Carter" <carter@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

The Nov/Dec 1999 issue of Photo Techniques, which arrived
today, has a "Recent News" (i.e. rewritten press release)
story covering what it calls two "retro" cameras.  They
are the Voigtlaender Bessa-L, and the Yasuhara T981, 
a metal-bodied rangefinder camera with a Leica screw
mount (called a "Leica-L screw mount"), and TTL
exposure.  It is said to feature a mechanical metal-blade
focal-plane shutter (1 to 1/2000, synch. 1/125) with a 
10-sec. mechanical self-timer, and a viewfinder with 
magnification of 1:1 and a manual wind lever.
It resembles one of the later Leica knockoffs of the 1950's.  

The URL at

http://www.yasuhara.co.jp/eng/products/t981/top.html

has three pictures and a three-view (front, back, top)
line drawing. The site contains the following announcement:

Sorry to say, T981 is not available now. For the first time, 
we planned to release it at the end of 1998. But after we 
started to get the reservation in Japanese market, too
many people rushed to this camera. More than 2,300 people 
have reserved it within 3 months. And the number is still 
increasing. We had been planning to produce
only 100 pieces in a month. But we found we must change the 
production system to produce more. So the first lot of 
T981 will come out in this spring.
But if we will start to export T981 after we fill the 
order in Japan, oversea customers will not be able to 
get it for many years. So we will start to supply some 
amount of T981 in this year. We will show every information 
in this page. Please keep to check this page. 
- -- 
                                             _RAC

Robert A. Carter KB2NTV carter@newark.rutgers.edu
15 Washington St. Newark NJ 07102 +1.973.353.5216