279 Wrong Parts Ordered

A couple of times recently, I've seen guys on message boards both selling things and said to have ordered things that don't look like they'd fit the bikes they say they will.
Basically, it's a case of the motorcycle manufacturer giving different bikes very similar model designations, and most people just aren't up on all the lingo by a long shot.

Yamaha has been giving bikes the WR designation since 1989.
The first one was a 1989 model that was practically identical to that year's YZ-250 motocross bike, but with some changes to make it better while off-road and not on the motocross track.
This bike was officially called the YZ-250WRW (the last W stood for 1989 model).
By 1991, they decided to give this bike it's own model designation and called it the WR-250ZB.
So, WR came to be known as their motocross-based off-road bike.

When the world went 4-stroke crazy, the WR went that way, too.
In 2001, the WR-250Z was no more (in the USA, anyway) and we got the 4-stroke WR-250FN.
Just as the WR-250Z was based on the 2-stroke YZ-250 motocross bike, the WR-250F was a 4-stroke based on the then-new YZ-250F 4-stroke motocross bike.
See?
Once you understand that change from 2-stroke to 4-stroke, it ain't that complicated.

Where I believe the Yamaha factory did complicate things is when (probably decided upon by marketing gurus working there, AKA psychotic salesmen who live to just sell stuff) they started calling their dual-purpose bike the WR, as with the 2008 WR-250RX that I used to own.
Same with the 2008 WR-250XX I currently own.
These two bikes are definitely not off-road bikes based on their motocross counterparts.
They're dual-purpose bikes made to be ridden on the street, off-road at a casual pace, and have the weight, EPA restrictions, and (thankfully) the relatively long engine life that everyone expects out of a street-going model.

The problem is that most people, even guys that work inside Yamaha motorcycle dealers (even guys that own these dealerships, I've seen) don't realize these days that a WR is not a WR.
They automatically think that the bikes are all basically the same, just that some are street legal and some are not.
This could not be more wrong, as the WR-250F and WR-250R or X share no parts or designs.
It's all a big marketing scheme in order to attract the buyer to that flashy WR designation and that sporty-looking bodywork - who cares if they really don't understand what it is they're looking at.

So, today I saw another guy all happy because he'd won an E-Bay auction for a Graves exhaust system that supposedly fits the WR-250R or X.
Well, if the pic shown for it is the correct one, it's actually made for a WR-250F, like my WR-250FY.
The way the pipe is bent and where the mounting holes are easily tell the tale, but the guy buying it doesn't know that.
Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if the freak selling it doesn't know that.
Or, maybe he pretended not to know, huh? ;)

Off to jerk,
-John