2022 WR250F & WR450F – A SALES & RRP HISTORY

Yamaha is talking a big game with its just-unveiled 2022-model WR250F and WR450F. According to their PR, this new quarter-litre bush weapon “turns, stops and goes better than ever before” … and “can be raced straight out of the create”. Meanwhile, launched amid fanfare about it being the lightest, most nimble, most race-ready enduro bike Yamaha has ever produced, the new-gen 2021/’22 WR450F also has big expectations to live up to. But how do those marketing claims square with reality, and what sort of sales will these new models post?

Well, the new-generation 2022 WR250F won’t be available for us to sample until late 2021, but our recent ride impression on the 2022 WR450F certainly confirmed that it is a vastly better and more versatile enduro machine – and significantly more race-ready – than any of its predecessors.

So, while we await the arrival of the 2022 WR250F, let’s reflect on the success story that both 450cc and 250cc WR-Fs have been for Yamaha Motor Australia since they first arrived back in 1999 and 2001, respectively. What these sales stats don’t reveal is that both models have consistently been the biggest-selling enduro bikes in their class in Australia for the past two decades. Do the math and you get a total of around 14,000 WR250F units, while the WR450F (including the 400 and 426cc models) tallies to an astronomical 34,000-odd units, and that’s before 2021-model sales are counted! In other words, Yamaha does have a leg to stand on when they refer to their WR450F as “Australia’s favourite dirt bike”.

While we’re doing the stats thing, we thought you’d also be interested in seeing each model’s RRP evolution over those two decades, so prices are included in the table.