233: Fly, and Be Free

This pic comes from 1991.
The bike is a 1990 Yamaha YZ-250A1.

What I find strange about the Yamaha designation YZ-250A1 is that the 2011 YZ-250 is called that, too.
To me, this is potential confusion, calling both the 1990 model and the 2011 model the same thing.
Here's what I mean and the reason why they do this:

Back in the 1960s and until the early 1970s, Yamaha motorcycles were given model designations that made it difficult to tell what model year it was (or even how many cc the engine was), and you had to be a Yamaha guru to know this without scouring books to find out.
The designation DT-1CMX doesn't exactly tell me any of that important information too easily.
So, in 1974, the Yamaha factory got with the program and adopted a system of simply going through the alphabet, and changing the letter each year.
In 1974, the YZ-250 was called the YZ-250A.
1975 was the YZ-250B.
1976 was the YZ-250C.
1977 was the YZ-250D.
1978 was the YZ-250E.

Do you get the drift, there, Lenny?

This was a much, much easier way for everybody - from the dumb kid who barely knows how to put gas in the tank to the salesman in the Yamaha shop to the guys working in the factory back in Japan - to tell at a glance and tell other people he's talking with to know exactly what model and year the bike is.
This is a very good system because it's so simple and foolproof.

Foolproof unless you do this:

We're now starting the 3rd trip through the alphabet with this changing the letter bit.
The first year for A was 1974, and that 1974 YZ-250 was the YZ-250A.
The second year for using the letter A was 1990, and that bike in the above pic was the YZ-250A1.
The A versus A1 makes it easy to tell which is a 1974 model and which is a 1990 model, even though both bikes use the letter A.
Well, 2011 marks the start of the 3rd trip through, and you'd think that the 2011 YZ-250 would be called the YZ-250A2.
Not so.
Somebody decided to use YZ-250A1, just as it was in 1990.
See the potential confusion?
This goes heavily against any kind of Japanese techno-think, where everything is intended to be scientifically exact and precise, the way they'd been ever since I'd started working with parts for these bikes in 1987.
Maybe somebody back at the factory has been effected by Shirley MacLain's new age religion website.
Or, maybe the guys in charge of keeping things neat and orderly as far as that stuff goes have finally retired or have taken a reprieve from life and are now residing six feet under. ;)

Off to jerk,
-John