Wildfire. Not Wildfire. Confusion.
Posted by: Glenn_MacGrady
on Oct-29-12 1:25 PM (EST)
No one has any idea what canoe is being discussed when someone says Bell "Wildfire". That's because Bell immorally named two different canoes with the same name, causing massive customer confusion that still continues 10 years later, and that borders on fraud.
The real Wildfire is the symmetrically rockered hull originally produced by Bell, then Placid, and now Colden. The differentially rockered and changed shouldered hull that Bell first and immorally called a Wildfire was later changed to Yellowstone (as others have pointed out above), due probably for legal reasons when the real Wildfire production was moved to Placid.
This name confusion poisons all the "Wildfire" reviews on this site. It's hard to know which hull is under discussion.
I vote never to call a differentially rockered hull a Wildfire no matter what Bell originally called the Yellowtone. Call it a Yellowstone. Only the symmetrically rockered hull should be called Wildfire, and it has never been made in Royalex.
I think Windwalker got a Yellowstone because he said it was Royalex. Because of this confusion, I have no idea which hull Pete Georg's wife is paddling, though I have little doubt that in either case it's a better freestyle canoe than an Argosy.