FLAWED GENIUS!

Our headline explains all about the RD400: so much of it is wrong, but success is carried off because in the end the balance is just about tipped in favour of the right.

And by heck is there a confusion of influences around this model, from beginning to end. It is to its credit that it can shirk all its failings and shortcomings and appear as the pristine example of a true motorcycling icon.

Let’s start with its predecessor the RD350. First made metal in 1973, that bike emerged as part of a newly united Yamaha family. Up until 1973 the series of Yamaha two-strokes was muddled. The RD350’s immediate predecessor had been named the R5, while it’s sibling 250 was named the (Y) DS7. Meanwhile, a 200 was named the CS5 and a 125 the AS3. Dare we mention the production racers, which in fact bore a lot of shared components with the roadsters? Here we had the 350cc TR3 (based on the R5 road bike), the 250cc TD2B (based on the YDS6, updated). It was a mess of nomenclature, and someone, somewhere in the Yamaha management must have cried ‘Enough’. So, in 1973 the Yamaha two-stroke road bikes were at last renamed collectively the RD series (RD – Race Developed) and the racers TZ (why TZ? Answers on a postcard…)

Now while the RD350 was ‘race developed’, we should note that RDs are a long way short of being road-going TZs. Back in 1973, when the RD350 could barely top 106mph, the new TZ350 was good (on paper) for