Maibatsu dirt bike

A dirt bike with the maker's name still readable under the damage: MAIBATSU in navy on a yellow shroud, beside the same triangular mark that reappears on the number board.

The camera is close enough that most of this is transcription rather than description. MAIBATSU runs across the ochre radiator shroud in dark navy capitals, large and sharp. In front of it sits a triangular mark made of three stacked chevrons in red, and that same mark appears again, in red-orange on what is left of the blue field at the bottom of the front number board. The maker's badge is on the machine twice.

The bike is a trail machine and not a sports one. A number board stands above a rectangular headlight, worn through to bare grey across most of its face with the dark blue surviving down the right-hand side; the front mudguard is mounted high and clear of the tyre, and the fork tubes are the same ochre as the shroud. The bars are wide with a crossbar and pad, a master cylinder sits on the right, and a fuel tank in olive shows between the shrouds. Somebody has scrawled a short word in yellow across the number board by hand. It begins with what reads as Shu and then gives out in the worn paint.

Everything on it is worn. The ochre and blue panels are chipped back to grey in patches, the number board is scuffed almost opaque, the fork tubes are dulled and the front mudguard is stained. The rider is in camouflage shorts with a bare leg against the shroud; behind, palms and a chain-link fence.

The name is half ours. The maker is on the machine, read off the shroud in a press still at full resolution, and that is the reading this page rests on. The model is not: a community database files this bike as the Maibatsu Manchez, a trail-bike nameplate the series has carried before, and the word appears nowhere on the bike. The hypothesis block sets out what speaks for and against it. GTA 5's Manchez is the obvious counterpart in shape, a tall dual-purpose machine with a high mudguard and a number board, and that is a comparison of silhouettes, not a badge.

How to recognise it

• MAIBATSU in navy capitals across the ochre radiator shroud
• A three-chevron triangular mark, red on the shroud and red-orange on the number board
• Front number board worn through: dark blue where the paint survives, bare grey where it has gone
• Rectangular headlight under the number board
• High-mounted front mudguard, fork tubes in the same ochre as the shroud
• A hand-scrawled yellow word across the number board, beginning Shu
• Paint chipped back to grey across most panels

The frame it comes from

The frame is a still from the official Press pack, which carries no timecode. It is 3840 by 2160, and the vehicle occupies 1612 by 972 of it. Also in it: a police car, Jason Duval, and Lucia Caminos.

How this was measured

These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work

What we still do not know

• What the scrawl on the number board says. It is not the model name a published list gives this bike.
• The model. The maker is on the machine; the model is not, anywhere in this crop.
• Whether the wear is the finish or a damage state
• Everything measured: top speed, handling, price, where it spawns