ATV Industry Facts: Did You Know?

Putting the power to the ground.

Nearly all of the ATVs sold on the market today come equipped with fully automatic transmissions (except for a small percentage of the market consisting of sport and race models that use a manual clutch transmission) but this wasn’t always the case. Throughout most of the 80s and on through the mid 90s the automatic clutch or “semi-automatic transmission” was the most popular configuration in the sport.

The automatic clutch needed to be shifted through the gears manually but used a centrifugal clutch that automatically engaged anytime the operator let go of the throttle to make stalling impossible.

A good portion of the success of the automatic transmission can be credited to the advent of the CVT or continuously variable transmission- essentially a single belt-driven gear with the ability to change its gear ratios on the fly.

Bonus Fact: First to bring the CVT to the ATV game was Suzuki back in 1987 with their LT80.