April 5, 2007
From Russia With Love
We have had an interesting trip to Japan so far and even more interesting product planning meetings. The past season of late / low snow has left the industry with swollen inventories. This is having a major impact on our strategy.
Sales in the
Snowmobile for Yamaha
Listening to Victor’s accounts it sounds like ‘Wild Wild West meets the Sopranos’ in
Our engineers have been running 130% and prepared some very nice prototypes for us to test, leading us out as far as 2011. We have a ‘skunk works’ team here in Shibetsu who have been responsible for manifesting some of our best ideas over the years. One thing I find unfortunate; many of their projects have never been produced and no one outside of our planning group ever got to see them. As you probably know this is our 40th anniversary and along with the new comes a changing of the guard. Most of the guys who were part of the early days have retired.
An old friend of mine, Karl Ishima is celebrating his 36th year 
working for snowmobile. I had the pleasure to spend the evening with Karl and Nobi (whom you met in my Revelstoke report) talking about old times and we concluded that Karl would collaborate with me to add some stories and pictures to this blog over the summer just to show you some of those prototypes and share his behind the scenes memories.
I didn’t realize that Nobi (who started in snowmobile with Karl back in 1970) worked in Canada for a few seasons. He was involved with racing and notable drivers such as the Trapp’s,managing our early sno-pro race team with Bob Work and traveling coast to coast three times.
He had a great story of a race trailer breakdown on the prairies when they had a tow truck come to their rescue. After they got hooked up and ready to drag the rig away, Nobi decided to relieve himself and politely went to the back of the truck-trailer unbeknown to the driver who dropped it in gear and left Nobi with his fly open in the middle of nowhere. I would have loved to see the expression on the RCMP officers face who found this young Japanese fellow in the bright Yamaha wind breaker freezing his butt on the side of the Trans Canada highway in February. Who would have thought he’d go on to become the president of our entire motor sports division. Thankfully he still has the passion and deep roots in snowmobile.
The snow conditions at our test center were pretty good for April and our joint test work will help engineering confirm our new priorities and targets.
We’re off to
“pleased to report the QDR request we came here to propose being our top priority has been adopted by factory, more on that later.”
More on that later!? Cant wait, cant wait!
April 6th, 2007 at 8:10 amDo I hear 136″ track, bigger gas reservoir and a deluxe gauge pod worthy of the machine?! Please say yes, please.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:39 amGreat report. Can’t wait for the stories (we know the great new product will always come but the stories can be forgotten if not recorded). BTW you can likely still find something like the Russian wild west just north of Kamsack/Preeceville – Vodka, sleds, guns, maybe even mafia LOL
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April 7th, 2007 at 8:41 amChris, Jon,
Just wondering on industry insights on the next generation of crossover vehicles – ATV’s with tracks for winter use!!!
How do they stack up today – in your personal opinions – what do you estimate the future to look like!
I am assuming that hi-performance sleds will always remain – but that ATV’s with tracks could replace the VK type models one day??
Cheers,
DAMIAN
…Yo Damian, Interesting question. I posed the same thing to factory when the first track kits became available. It is conceivable a tracked ATV could replace much of what the Bravo, light utility snowmobile market market has to offer. The ‘Viking’ is a pretty special machine and I don’t think a tracked ATV will be able to do the same work. The track kits have gotten a lot better over the last couple of years and if used properly do not seem to be causing too many failures to the host ATV’s which really aren’t engineered with tracks in mind. I was concerned about axle, drive train and steering but doesn’t seem to be a big issue. The performance aspect: delivers far less than most sleds and won’t fulfill the sport side of things. I tracked a Raptor once and it turned it into a tractor… you may have seen photos of it in ATV Magazine with Luke Lester taking some big air (only took me half a day to bend it back into shape)… The only other point is they don’t mix well with sleds on the trail and IMHO should not be allowed on smb trails, period Would I like one for the cottage? Yep! Do I believe there is a market for a properly engineered ATV / OE track conversion vehicle? Yep. Will it replace my sled? Nope! Hey thanks for asking!! cr
April 11th, 2007 at 9:36 am