Here at Supertrax World HQ, editorializing about snowmobiles requires digging deeper into the background stories on sleds, technology, new models, vintage models or completely different vehicles like Snow Bikes.
It’s not good for either you or ourselves if we just pen a commentary on the spec sheet associated with something new. We crave inside info on the “why” behind new stuff, not just the “what”. Providing our readers and Snowtrax Television viewers with deeper insights is something we take great pleasure in delivering to you.
You already know this, but you can go to any OEM website and get length, width and height info. What we believe makes reading this mag or watching Snowtrax TV a must-do for snowmobilers is the story behind the specifications.
A recent example was our trip to Austria to witness the very first Turbo ACE and 600R engines being born at Rotax. We described to our readers and viewers the brand new in-house technology Rotax developed for manufacturing the new turbocharged and intercooled ACE engine – specifically the exhaustively precise and sanitary processes required to build a completely proprietary turbocharger unit.
Delivering information like this to our readers and viewers is what we do best, and make no mistake, we love being the source you use to get inside info and opinion.
There’s that word: Opinion. We regularly develop opinions on new stuff as soon as we see it and sample it. We believe it’s imperative we give you our informed opinion on every new idea in the biz – not because you should always agree with us and make our opinion your opinion, but more than that, we hope you’ll shape your opinion by critiquing ours.
In case you hadn’t noticed, snowmobiles are getting increasingly similar as we move deeper into the new millennium. Yes, competitive differences are sometimes competitive advantages. However, being able to decipher what’s really a good idea and what’s being pandered as better simply because it’s different is increasingly challenging.
The need for us to talk to the engineers behind the ideas is paramount. The companies that make their product people available to us contribute tangibly to the formation of our opinions on these pages.
Another great example of a back-story is the Polaris Patriot 850 engine. Clearly, Polaris needs to be competitive with Ski-Doo at every juncture and the 850 Patriot gives Polaris faithful exactly what they need to shred Kevlar Lake ski-to-ski with the 850 Rotax.
You don’t need us to tell you that! What you do need us to tell you is the background story on the Patriot’s lack of NVH compared to the Rotax 850. Polaris engineers dug deep and changed their own rules by re-thinking traditional snowmobile engine mounting designs. The result is a thunderous 850cc powerplant that is smoother than the Liberty 800 and the Rotax 850. There’s more on this inside this issue.
Here’s something else we’ve learned about you. One of our techniques aimed at keeping readers and viewers informed about stuff that interests them most is to regularly survey our readers.
Recently we asked what would make you switch brands on your next sled purchase. Surprisingly it wasn’t all about horsepower and whiz-bang features. A common theme was a closer interaction with the OEM of choice – like a real relationship. We’ll let the OEM marketing gurus chew on that idea for a while.
Moving ahead, we want our readers and viewers to know we’re constantly digging and prying for information from all corners of the sno-mo-biz that we’ll ultimately expound on these pages.
It’s what snowmobilers like you, want.
