Reference
Model History
Six references sit under this heading and they answer different questions. One of them decides which parts fit. The other five say so themselves, and are useful for other reasons.
Which of these do you want?
| Reference | Answers | Rests on | Size and certainty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model specs Decides what fits | What was a 1996 GTX. Engine, induction, hull type, year by year. | General knowledge, and one secondary reference whose own author says he wrote it from memory. | 3 makes, 1222 rows, 5 verified. |
| Model timelines Not fitment | What each company launched, and in what order. | One named publication per make, graded by what that publication is. One of the two is the manufacturer. | 2 makes, 148 models, 27 years the sources skip. |
| History Not fitment | How the four-stroke changeover actually happened. | Yamaha's own dealer magazine, cited per paragraph. | 4 articles. Carries no displacements, so it cannot verify a spec table. |
| Yamaha News index Not fitment | Where to go and read the primary documents yourself. | Yamaha, 77 issues, 1986 to 2009. Nothing rehosted. | 21 read end to end. A finding aid, not a source in itself. |
| Games Not fitment | When the sport was big enough that Kawasaki, Yamaha and BRP licensed their names into video games. | One catalogue of every dedicated title, with the licensor named on each deal rather than just the brand. | 29 games, 9 licensed, none since 2007. |
| Where the sport came from Not fitment | Who built the first one, and which widely repeated claims about it are wrong. | Eleven sources graded individually. The article most retellings copy is held on file and may not support anything. | 11 milestones, 1965 to 2009, 2 contested. |
The Yamaha News index is indented because it is History's bibliography rather than a separate thing to read. And Model specs is the only row that answers a fitment question: a timeline runs on the release years its publisher used, and a United States model year can sit either side of them. One of the contested entries on the origins page is a Kawasaki production window for exactly that reason, and it is printed as contested rather than resolved.
Model specs, by make
1217 of 1222 records are unverified. Figures were written from general knowledge or taken from a secondary reference whose own author states it was written from memory, so almost none of it has been checked against a manufacturer document. The Engine column names the engine rather than measuring it, which is why a Kawasaki 750 shows as 750 and displaces 743. Year boundaries are the other thing most likely to be wrong.
3 makes · 1222 model rows · 5 verified