Rarity from the Off-Road Archive: Loman 225

A blast from off-roading’s past.

We like to fancy ourselves experts on the ATV and its rich history around here but every once in a while that prestigious title requires that we did deep into the global archives so as to remind ourselves of some of the multitude of unique and wonderful machines that lead to the industry we know and love today.

Meet the Loman 225 – a machine that seems, at a glance anyway, to have most in common with something like the modern day Roxor but these little off-roaders took most of their internal configuration from the then-popular snowmobiles of the era.

Powered by a rear-mounted air-cooled 225cc CCW (Kioritz) 2-stroke, the Loman used an automatic transmission coupled to a final belt drive to bring power to the rear wheels.

Perhaps most interesting of all, from the factory it included a pair of skis that could be swapped for the front wheels on the fly depending on the conditions outside.

The ability to traverse snow as well as dirt makes a lot of sense given the factory was located in Richelieu Quebec.

Like many ATVs of the era (early 1970s), the Loman 225 came and went as little more than a novelty piece of a yet-to-be established industry but served as little glimpse of things to come. Arguably the design and functionality of the Loman lived on several years later through the Honda Odyssey (and Pilot) and most recently the Polaris ACE.