Yamaha commercialized the industry's first 4-stroke personal watercraft, and has considerably improved it since. The Waverunners benefit from the expertise gathered from to the development of the brand's advanced, 4-stroke motorcycle engines. Ever in tune to its clients needs, the manufacturer keeps improving its lineup of Waverunners year after year.

The 2008 Yamaha Waverunner VX offers now more than ever a price-quality ratio that's hard to beat.

Moto123.com got to try out the entry-level model, the Waverunner VX. This craft, very easy to use, has inherited all of Yamaha's know-how, and its reduced price compared to the other models has not been achieved to the detriment of the high-end Waverunners' strong suits.

Smooth and clean
Under the seat resides the famous 1,052-cc, 20-valve 4-stroke engine featuring dual camshafts. Despite its 110 ponies, this engine is one of the cleanest and most fuel-efficient in the industry thanks to its excellent electronic fuel injection system and its ultra-sophisticated electronic management system. The latter also serves as a security system by maintaining a slight pump rotation when the accelerator is completely released, ensuring better control of the steering.

The VX's pump is equipped with a high-flow intake duct and a stainless steel progressive-pitch impeller and boasts extremely strict clearance tolerances between the impeller and the housing. Thanks to Yamaha's excellent, patented Sound Suppression System, the engine's operation is astonishingly smooth and quiet. This particularly advanced system reduces the engine's noise level and vibrations by way of a series of exhaust and intake baffle resonators integrated into the hull.

The 4-cylinder MR-1 engine's acceleration is decent, but we're far from the aggressiveness that a 2-cylinder engine, unfortunately overly polluting, can demonstrate. The weight of this new breed of 4-stroke watercraft is also responsible for its average performance, despite the increased power. The manufacturers had to design cleaner watercraft, and in this regard Yamaha is a length ahead of its competitors. Well done!

The VX's hull is the product of many years of research and multiple series of tests.