motovator

Hi, I was looking for a lightly used beginner bike, and finally narrowed it down to either '96 Kawasaki Vulcan EN500 or '97 Yamaha Virago XV535. I looked up the reliability rating at bikez.com for the '97 XV535 and found it to be far below average, and significantly below EN500, and '96 XV535. The rating seems to be poor for only model year '97. I also looked up the cost (Motorcycle Consumer News), and found that there is a huge jump in price for '97 models. The average prices (in US) for '98 Models: $2090, '96 models: $1775, and '97 models: $4340! That's more than twice the '98 models! So does anyone know what changes were made in '97 XV535 that made it less reliable but more expensive on the used market? Thanks.