How many snowmobile manufacturers were there

Why in gods name did you buy a snowmobile. Log in. Study now. See Answer. Best Answer. Study guides. Q: How many snowmobile manufacturers were there? Write your answer Related questions. What are some manufacturers of snowmobiles? What snowmobile brands have the biggest market share? How many wheels does a snowmobile have? Which companies offer snowmobile rentals in Colorado? Where are some popular destinations that have snowmobile tracks? How many digits is the vin on a snowmobile?

Shades of Moto-Ski? Mercury Snowmobiles — A division of Mercury Marine; best in racing and popular in the s. Mercury is now frozen up and focused on marine products, instead. Blaze — A customized snowmobile brand that pioneered forward platform and narrow snowmobiles since ; it has since closed up shop.

Massey Ferguson — Like Deere and Ariens, the farm equipment company once made snowmobiles, as well. Sears Snowmobiles — The iconic retailer experimented in selling motorized recreational products in stores and catalogs. As competition increased, and other factors interfered, Sears decided to downsize. JCPenney Snowmobiles — Another national retailer, like Sears, sold its own brand of private label snowmobile.

Chaparral Snowmobiles — A beautiful brand that flew away and decided to stick with marine products.

Kawasaki Snowmobiles — This Japanese brand also once made snowmobiles, but miscommunication with top brass cut the products without a word. Sno-Jet — These were beautiful blue sleds, but they jetted when Kawasaki bought out a good brand. Fox-Trac — This brand was so popular that even Elvis Presley owned one until his death. It is now a snowmobile supplier, making shocks and parts. There were so many brands but not popular. Some lasted just about one week!

Mark Falso is expert in several fields including snowmobiles, diners-drive-ins-fast food restaurants, shopping malls, and Recreational Vehicles. With sales dropping to a low of , in it looked like the snowmobile might be a thing of the past. There was one silver lining in all of this, however, in the mid-eighties there were still over four million snowmobiles being used around the world, a peak number that may never be seen again.

The remaining manufacturers began making higher quality machines with excellent suspensions that could take advantage of what was now a well-established trail system. When the nineties began with some monster early snow years, snowmobiling experienced a giant resurgence. Although sales never reached the numbers they achieved in the early seventies, snowmobiles had made a comeback.

Everything has its time and for the snowmobile that time was the early seventies. Snowmobiling occurs on roads groomed and marked for snowmobiling, the same roadways used by recreational vehicles, cars, trucks and busses. On US National Forest Land, most of the trails used by snowmobiles are on groomed roads used by summer recreationists. There are also secondary and seasonal roads within the forests used by snowmobilers.

These roads are groomed and marked by volunteers who work closely with the local U. Forest Service staff in maintaining and managing those areas.

The manufacturers have always been actively involved in promoting safe riding behavior while snowmobiling. Over one million safety related brochures and decals, and hundreds of thousands of posters and safety DVDs have been distributed free of charge to snowmobile enthusiasts throughout the world.