A little more on the ‘is it an F1?’ debate mentioned above...
When Yamaha introduced the 1985 models to markets outside of Japan, they were the first faired models of any of the long lived RD range. Yamaha decided to honour that with a new name in most markets; RD350F. The ‘1’ was added later by enthusiasts to differentiate these machines from the 86-on bikes that used different bodywork, which were known as F2, this was similar to the LC and LC2 (YPVS) nomenclature.
In Japan the two stroke parallel twin bikes had been dubbed RZ right back as far as 1980 with the introduction LC, there no longer being an RD in that market, probably to differentiate it from the old air cooled range. The RZ name travelled when the YPVS hit the Australian and USA shores in 1983, dying out in the USA in 1985 due to impending legislation, but remaining in Australia until much later in the decade. The name change was probably useful in the USA where the RD was seen as an air cooled machine and the 400s didnt have a wonderful name by the end of their life, and the 3 year break in imports of this type of bike (poor yanks never got the LC, more for the rest for us!) also allowed the new acronym to make sense.
So, In Australia the ’85 with the full faring was called an RZ250R, or RZ350R. RZ350F would have sounded ok perhaps, but Japan already had used the R tag to denote a more racy model and the name stuck when the bike came to Australia, plus it meant Yamaha could save a bit of cash and not have to make new graphics of course!
As an aside... The UK didn’t get an R model until 1992 with the Brazilian import that the press seemed to pan without any real thought as to what they were looking at; a budget sports bike with decant everyday riding position. The issue for the Journos was the 80s build quality, no worse than any other RD, but not cutting it against the 90s models and the fact they were restricted to run South American fuel, yet dealers removed those restrictions during the PDI. I owned one, for the money it was great. The Mags were wrong about it but sadly the modern journos just regurgitate what the old mags wrote, and the bikes are the RD350R is the least desirable of the range.
Back on track... These Aussie 1985 machines are amongst the first of the fully faired YPVS models and ‘many’ of the parts are identical to the UK/EU/Canada models... in fact I’ve yet to find a part that is different other than the frame and engine number codes, and the addition of the Aus compliance plate that was added locally. Ergo, the fully faired RZR is in fact an F1... And being an RZ probably has closer ties with the original Japanese models than the RD version... but let’s not go there!
If an F1 is rare, doesn’t that make an Aussie RZR rarer?
It might be churlish to say ‘depends on where you are...’, but it’s pretty much a given that outside of Australia you’re not going to find many, I would have said Any, but one has popped up in the UK! But, even in Australia these bike are rare. While I don’t have any real stats, we were a very small market back in 1985, we got these in 250R (1GA) and 350R (1AH) versions, but most were sold as 1GA 250s it seems as we had a 250 cheaper Rego (road tax) back then, so it was a good deal to have the 250. That makes a real 1AH 350 pretty rare indeed here. Over the years I’ve seen a few come up for sale, but very few original 350s, most 350s are 250s with the 350 top end banged on and not done fully (i.e. often no thought to fitting a 350 pump, CDI, carbs etc), and of course these are not '350 1AH' on the compliance plate... decals and cylinders do not fully make these a 350, its the 1AH code on the compliance plate that says what they were from new that does, sad tho that is for me with my lowly 1GA plated bike you might think, but I’m not bothered.
It has been said a few times on the forums that 'only 200' were sold in ’85, but no one seems to know for sure. What we do know is that it was a one year bike sold in a very small market which means Yamaha would have been unlikely to have sold thousands anyway, but from a business perspective 200 simply isn’t very many of anything to have a specific model complied and imported. If I was a product guy at Yamaha and the option to sell so few bikes came across my desk I would be thinking 'why are we doing this for so few sales? just send them the Canadian or UK spec bikes, job done...!'. What I would say is that we think it’s unlikely that we had N1s here as very few exist and I’ve never found one I can’t prove isn’t a more recent Japanese import, and having only one model would have helped sales of the F1, plus no one expected the N1 model when the F1 came out, everyone just got excited about a full fairing don’t forget.
In trying to work out numbers I applied the following logic; it is said that yamaha frame numbers always start at 000101 (the lower numbers for prototypes I assume) and even if you cannot find stats you can ask around the owners and find the highest frame number which will tell you that at least that number (less 101) were sold with that code.
Using that theory I’ve found that there were ‘at least’ 500 of the IAH 350s and ‘at least’ 800 1GA 250s sold in Australia... Simple maths makes that 1300+ all up. Hmmm... To be honest, that seems an awful lot of these bikes for such a small market. In the same year France sold 600 350s (N&F models combined), and they had a population almost 4 times that of Australia. So, selling double the number of bikes, even across both engine sizes, seems highly unlikely in the smaller market... but it could be true... Yamaha Australia if you’re reading this and want to comment, please do email me.
So, how does this affect how rare these bikes are? Well... In 5+ years of checking the sales sites and forums, I reckon even with the guys who are restoring them that I can account for about 15 bikes in 250 and 350 combined. Not very many for 1300 sold... Did we really scrap so many?
What I will say is that very few are restored. Mostly they are like many vehicles here, well used on the road, then they became farm bikes and were patched up (bodged with various degrees of mechanical ineptitude and Aussie ingenuity) to keep them being fun, until finally they die and are scrapped or sold off for fools like you and I to restore. Very few survive now it seems, but it has to be more than 1%, I would think 10% would be sensible, which means the total sales would have to have been lower... A mystery that only Yamaha can untangle perhaps?