Year of manufacture xt660z
 

How do you identify the year of manufacture please. Theres a lot of N O S around advertised as current year model because they're 'new'

Ok i've sorted this out myself. If you know the VIN no, go to this site and key it in. It'll tell you the year of manufacture, as opposed to the year its being presented as a 'new' bike. http://www.auto-vin-decoder.com/yamaha.html

That's great, but it doesn't come out with production year.

There are quite a few VIN check websites, usually they work from the registration number and will give some basic history information for free and offer a deeper report for a few Euros / $ / �. Just google 'registration check'......or whatever your country calls the bike's number plate.

I think theres just a difference in terminology on this. The yamaha site, using the vin no it applied to the bike when it was 'made' or 'produced' states for eg the bike im looking at as a 2012 model. The bike was sold to its 1st owner in 2014. It sat around for 2 years. That does'nt make it a 2014 model, imo anyway. This seems to a relatively common occurence.

I think it was a common situation in recent times but I guess dealerships are measured on sales more and more and to have old stock left over is maybe a sign of overstocking or a sudden shift in customer spending.

I agree Chalk. The 2nd bike I looked at, adv as an ‘09 model, only gave me country of manufacture, not the year of manuf on the Yamaha site. Clearly it’s not an exact science !