Yamaha WR450F 2-Trac

The general consensus amongst our group of testers was that most serious enduro riders would probably prefer to stick with conventional lighter bikes in hard or twisty going but might well opt for 2WD in bogs or on beaches. If the championship organisers allowed it, one could imagine riders fitting a 2WD kit for some courses and reverting to standard drive for others. An official bolt-on kit may well be made available before long.

Impressive though the Ohlins kit is, Yamaha would sell far more 2-Trac machines if it kept the standard Kayaba suspension which would make the 2-TRAC WR450 thousands cheaper. But since it’s such a limited edition machine, they’ll probably sell them all anyway.

As for 2WD road bikes and scooters arriving into dealer showrooms, the word from Yamaha was definitely ‘not for a while yet’. Yamaha personnel were keen to deny previous reports in a British magazine that ‘you’ll see 2-Trac on scooters very quickly’ since no scooter has yet even been tested with the system. A supermoto version of the WR450 seems the most likely next arrival in 2-Trac form, since it would require nothing more than a change of rims and tyres.

Meanwhile, the only other 2WD machine commercially available is Rokon’s balloon-tyred, shaft driven Trail Breaker which has been around in various forms since 1968. It has little power and no suspension.

Yamaha is planning to build only 250 2-Tracs this year, and all of them will be built at their Belgarda factory in Italy. In addition to the Ohlins suspension and steering damper that was fitted to our test prototypes, the production machines will also have alloy rather than steel handlebars and revised plastics around the forks and oil feed pipes.

The bike will be sold as a competition machine for about 12,000 Euros although it will be possible to individually register a 2-Trac for the road by fitting Yamaha’s optional 500 Euro WR450 road legal kit. All our test bikes were road registered and fitted with road legal Pirelli MT21 Rallycross tyres.

In Australia one would expect the two wheel drive machine to be up around the $20,000 mark but Yamaha Australia have no indication as yet to how much the machines will cost on our shores. Yamaha Australia has confirmed that they have a limited number of the machines on order but are unsure as to when they are expected to arrive.

WR450F 2-Trac on this side - WR450F this side
Both machines in this picture have full Ohlins suspension components