It’s been a long haul for our readers who reside in the US Midwest. Before last winter’s near record cold and snowfall and thus a long riding season, there had been five so-so winters in a row for the US heartland.

In Canada, particularly in the province of Ontario, we’ve had some duds and some winners in the same time span. Before you assume that’s because we’re way up north and should expect lots of consistent snow, consider this: The heartland of snowmobiling on the east side of the Great Lakes in Ontario, New York and Quebec is mostly located parallel to or just south of prime riding areas in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Great Lakes send a lot of snow to us here in the east.

In terms of attitude and overall enthusiasm for snowmobiling, we’d have to rate this fall as strong. The response to early-order programs was, across the board, exceptional.

With the Midwest having a strong snow season last winter, motivation to early-order a new ride was so strong it set records. As history has shown, time and again after a good winter, particularly one that goes late into March and early April, the manufacturers are pretty much guaranteed a strong early-order sales season. That’s exactly what happened in virtually every market where snowmobiles are sold.

With the OEMs claiming they have varying degrees of unsold inventory for sale this fall it’s interesting to ponder what will happen next. “Next” is the in-season sales season. It’s the second segment of the three part snowmobile yearly sales cycle.

Once we get to mid-December “show me” buyers enter the market. This is the third part of the sales cycle. These buyers don’t care about last season’s snow but would rather patiently wait until they see how the current winter kicks-off.

Believe it or not, these buyers are, for the most part, western deep snow types. What’s really interesting about this phenomenon is this: The mountain market is now the largest single segment in the sport. This means the OEMs have to “ball park” mountain sled production numbers to a higher degree than the “trail” segments and can end up with crates of unsold sleds if winter begins late or is less than heroic out west.

Ski-Doo, for the first time in many years, has some non-current inventory it has been successfully selling this fall. It will be interesting to watch what effect this will have on 2020 model fall sales. Ski-Doo’s Spring Break early order program was a huge hit last spring.

Arctic Cat’s “build to order” posture has to be causing dealers heartache without access to any current model year sleds to sell this fall while Polaris looks to be pretty clean of non-currents and you can bet they built long on mountain models as demand for the RMK series is at a fever pitch out west.

Yamaha swallowed the bitter pill a year ago and built short in an effort to clean house and move non-currents out the door. From what we heard it’s done just that and is selling 2020 sleds without the distraction of unprofitable year-old models.

Inasmuch as the fall sales season for flatland sleds is pretty much guaranteed to be strong, the mountain market will ultimately have the final say as to whether model year 2020 is a success.

The good news for the OEMs is this: From a weather perspective the western marketplace is considerably less volatile than the eastern flatland market. In other words, it traditionally snows with more consistency out west than in the east.

If the western market responds to good early season snow, the sno-mo-biz should card an excellent year, despite Arctic Cat not playing in the same game for MY 2020.

Early season programs across the board were highly successful so model year 2020 is already off to a great start.

Snowmobiling is unprecedented in its introduction of ground-breaking technology and use of engineering ideas other powersports mediums only dream about applying.

What’s happening in the auto industry has a tangible effect on what’s going on with snowmobiles. Same with the electronics industry; it’s no accident we’re seeing increased digitization used in the instrument packages offered on snowmobiles, and even the availability of things like GPS and cell phone app compatibility.

There are bigger trends happening. BRP recently announced it is building prototype 100-percent electric versions of its Sea-Doo watercraft and Spyder street roadster.

In a recent post on mainstream media, the company made it clear it will be building prototype all-electric Ski-Doo snowmobiles in the near future potentially for use in ski-hill applications and probably, national parks.

This response is clearly driven by the auto industry’s drive to perfect and market electric cars and trucks. Whether you agree with the demise of fossil-fuel powered transportation or not, this line of thinking is being pushed big-time by pseudo-scientists and politicians. It’s a trend that exists and is being jammed down our throats in a big way.

Clean and green electric power is a trend we gasoline addicts cannot buck – and it’s just not wise if we bury our heads in the sand and ignore it.

Yes, we can produce all the arguments about how environmentally clean our sport has become in the past decade, but governments only interested in getting re-elected continue to try to sell us on the fact that all fossil-fuel powered vehicles are tremendously evil and we need to be going electric.

So far, we haven’t had a chance to actually try out an electric snowmobile. A company you’ll be hearing more about, Taiga, actually plans to build a couple thousand of them this year – and we’re betting they work surprisingly well.

Another completely different trend we’re seeing – and it’s exclusive to the snowmobile business – is increasing consumer demand for price-point sleds.

There’s an awareness among newbies interested in getting into the sport that it’s expensive. This is entirely true and is a pretty major roadblock in getting the boundaries of the snowmobile market to increase.

If the market has come to a place where only those who are seasoned, experienced enthusiasts are prospective buyers, then our marketplace is only going to get smaller.

So far, the OEMS have not wholeheartedly responded to this trending line of thinking, but they need to! We need sleds that are cheap, fun and offer the full snowmobile experience at an unprecedented low price.

Yes, there are a couple of sleds that do this – the baseline, and unchanged for years, 600 Indy and Ski-Doo XP Sport series sleds are examples – but both companies hide these sleds at the back of their product brochures and refuse to promote or glorify them lest they become too popular and outsell their pricier, more fully equipped models.

There are very inexpensive ways to offer these sleds with already-developed suspension and driveline technology that would tempt first-time buyers or those who have been out of the sport for a while, to invest.

You could argue the industry is already moving this direction with sleds like the EVO, SnoScoot and ZR200; however, it’s different. Those are snowmobiles designed for an already-entrenched market and are never sold into a vacuum – meaning there’s always someone else in the family with an adult-sized full-meal-deal sled.

There are choices to make and ideas to be followed-up as pressure from world-wide trends become more visible. I just hope they never bring out a self-driving sled. That would really suck!

A number of the most popular, most beloved 2-stroke engines in snowmobile history were actually grossly inefficient and EPA dirty.

They simply had to go in an effort by the OEMs to clean up their total corporate average emissions. I call these engines “rotten” because that’s what they’re doing – rotting – in older sleds while the pricey tooling used to cast their myriad pieces literally rots away.

PART 5: Arctic Cat’s Laydown 700CC Suzuki Twin

This uniquely configured 2-stroke twin powering a legion of FireCats beginning in 2002 was one of the most mysterious motors ever introduced in this biz.

This weird engine, with the intake and exhaust on the same side, shouldn’t have run this fast. Engine gurus claimed the intake charge was actually shooting directly at the crank cheeks which were spinning the wrong way to aid induction.

We suspect the same thing that propelled the legendary Fuji 500 Polaris was at play with the Firecat. What, you ask? A highly refined drive system and chassis that was exceptionally friction free.

FireCat 600s (a variant of the 700) would regularly tow competitors’ 700s while the 700 FC could go past competitive sleds so fast down Kevlar Lake the vacuum in their wake would pull the hoods off all challengers.

Maybe we’ll never know the real reason behind this engine’s dominance; or, maybe, like one OEM told me – it wasn’t a 700 at all but rather a 750 and nobody ever bothered to measure the thing. Now rotting but never forgotten.

THERE’S MORE MUCH LOVED, DIRTY, ROTTEN ENGINES TO COME SO STAY TUNED!

A number of the most popular, most beloved 2-stroke engines in snowmobile history were actually grossly inefficient and EPA dirty.

They simply had to go in an effort by the OEMs to clean up their total corporate average emissions. I call these engines “rotten” because that’s what they’re doing – rotting – in older sleds while the pricey tooling used to cast their myriad pieces literally rots away.

PART 3: Arctic Cat’s Suzuki Case Reed 800cc TBI Twin

This throttle body–injected twin was a staple on Arctic Cat’s engine menu for almost 15 years.

The engine’s hallmark was unquestionably its bulletproof reliability. Some said you could push a ZR 800 out the backdoor of a C-130 cargo plane at 20,000 feet and the big Suzie would land on its wheels and start on the first pull.

Power, in the early days of the 800, was 100-percent industry competitive. However, as the years rolled on the engine didn’t get the necessary tune-ups it needed to stay at the top of the 800 class.

One not-so-nice feature of the big twin was its fattish response at engagement and its unrepentant production of thick exhaust smoke – warm or cold.

The 800’s throttle body injection system was the culprit. Because fuel was scavenged into the crankcase and oil mixed in the fuel rail, too much oil-rich, unburned fuel made it out the exhaust port.

If the EPA guidelines had never been set out, this engine could easily have been modified to make the most power in the biz. Why? There was so much lube getting into that engine it didn’t matter how lean you set it up, it would survive.

In its day we used to joke, if you left this engine idling too long you’d have to send out a search party to find it because it would have vibrated the sled right off the trail and into the woods.

Still, no hardcore green underwearer will ever say a bad word about this iconic and extremely popular engine.