Tag: Facts

A look at the sales stats side of things. Prior to the mid-2000s, ATV sales were in the neighborhood of 1-million units sold annually. The market came to a crashing halt in 2008 when the nation slipped into a recession brought about by the housing crisis. One of the first areas consumers begin to cut […] More »

First of its kind. Last of its kind. All ATVs were single-cylinder until 1987 when Yamaha released the Banshee. It made use of a 349cc, 2-stroke, liquid cooled, twin-cylinder engine configuration. While many manufacturers have since followed up with twin cylinder engines in the time since, the Banshee remains the only factory 2 cylinder 2-stroke […] More »

Early farm help. Back in the early to mid-1970s, ATVs like the Honda ATC 90 (three-wheeler) had yet to establish a firm target market, farmers began to take interest in using them to get around and handle farm work. A big part of the appeal was that they were quicker, cost less and used 8% […] More »

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 […] More »

First of its kind. A majority of the ATV manufacturers didn’t take development of four-wheelers seriously until 1988 when, after a lengthy investigation by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, it was deemed distributors would no longer be allowed to market three-wheel ATVs and manufacturers had to repurchase any unsold three-wheel models from dealer inventory. […] More »

Meet Edgar; an important common link. The top two American ATV brands share both a common founder and founding state. Edgar Heeten formed Arctic Cat in 1960 in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and prior to that he was co-founder of Polaris Industries in Roseau, Minnesota around 1954. Edgar Hetteen, a farmer before heading off to […] More »

ATV Racing is often treated as the side-show event to other forms of powersports racing (be it by our two-wheeled cousins, Monster Trucks, Tractor Pulls etc.) but from a sales perspective, year after year, more ATVs are sold than MX, dual-sport, motorcycle and scooter sales combined. This means many manufacturers can afford to lose money […] More »