This is just a cover story I got out of a magazine:

Polaris is known for being the "toughest quad on planet earth"... Well they are becoming the cheapest on planet earth. Every year more and more parts, consoles, axels, U joints are getting much cheaper. Older model ATV's can pull more load than a newer, say Polaris 330 Magnum. More features you would see on the Magnum and dissapating and becoming features you only see on sizes of 500 CC and higher. More features, actually more useful features like radiation and tridioding you only see on the Sportsman 800 EFI's and a few other of the Sportsman category now. We have seen more work done on Polaris ATVs more than any other brand. Can Am just released their "new look and name" that stands for Canadian American ATVs. Polaris will soon fall before Kawasaki and Suzukis partnership combining the overwhelming power of the Brute Force line, and King Quad lines as well.......

Thats pretty much it... the rest they kept going on about kaws and canams... i just wanted to see what you guys thought...

 

I've been told that market share is something like Yamaha,Polaris, Honda (maybe not in that order, but they are in the big three) Kawasaki and Suzuki are beneath them, and are not really living up to sales expectations w/ the brute force line or the R450 line. Did Doug Meyers happen to write this article? that would explain the praise of suziki as well as the miss-information. The alliance between suzuki and Kawasaki is over. It hurt both of their sales more than it helped them, and they have dropped it. Thus: the King Quad and Brute Force are no longer running the same motor. and Kawasaki does not have a KFX400 anymore. The R450 is experiencing lots of frame weld problems, and is simply not as strong of a motor as the one in the YFZ or the 450R. Sorry, but if it's runnign 18's on the back and is geared to top out lower than the Yam or Hon, than WHY DOES IT ACCELERATE SLOWER??? The Outlaw, on the other hand is selling as fast as it can be built (at least around where i live.) I see more Polaris's on the trails than any other brand up in Baldwin where i ride. (That 450R is getting pretty popular w/ the sport guys, but in sport/ utes, its all either Outlander 400s or some type of sportsman/magnum/explorer) Bottom line, that article is full of crap. THe hawkeye won't work as hard as the old 330 magnum, but the reason is that the Hawkeye is MUCH lighter for trail riding purposes. It's cute how magazines cut Polaris' trail abilities down due to weight, then when the release a lighter trail machine, it's workability gets attacked. THere is a clear bias in the media, if you don't believe me pick up a copy of Car & Driver and try to find an American vehicle which wins a shoot out. Or, reference Dirt Wheels shoot out between the Scrambler 500 and the Wolverine 450, in which the Scrammer MAN HANDLED the wolverine in every category, (READ THE ARTICLE, THEY ADMIT IT!) but the Wolverine got the win for three RETARDED reasons: 1) Digital instrumentation, 2) Bigger tires, 3) it's new and they think the scrammer needs an update. Apparently class-leading performance is not as important as constantly updating a machine, wouldn't want to keep the assembly lines tooled the same for a long time so as to offer a more affordable unit would you?

I guess what i'm trying to say is this: that magazine artical is absolutely full of it, Polaris is one of the fastest growing brands and the biased media is simply trying to downplay that. Just wait until the KTM partnership goes into full swing this year, I'm sure you won't read anything good about it, but simply put: WHO CARES. What really matters is the real-world performance of these units, not what the test riders from these magazines think. Doug Meyers ever race in the XC series? Or the MX series? and yet people listen to him tell you the Suzuki is simply the fastest thing his gray haired @$$ has ever ridden on an MX track? sorry, but until these editors and writers can place at a national, i'm not letting them tell me what to buy.

P.S. Sorry for the rant, but i've been seeing this for years, in every industry and am damn well sick of it.

 

nice post walt, i fully agree

 

The real problem is the top guns at the popo management table aren't dishing out the payola to the mags like the other manufacturers. Therefore they get the shaft.

 

Right o, Right o. Good show old chap. Tell it like it is. After I read that story about the Scrambler vs. the Wolverine, I couldnt believe the ending either. I thought that maybe I had read 2 different articles that were combined together. The one with the story mixed in with some other ending. I even re-read it several times and couldn't come up with where that ending came from. Still can't.

 

Very well put XLE!

Steve

 

The magnum is an old platform on its way out.....thats why they arent updating it like the other models. Just look at the hawkeye and you will see the big quad features.

 

well put walter... i agree you ranted... but it was well deserved and needed to be done... thank you...

i agree with you completely... and EVERYBODY listen to him... right now he has a quad that has been in the shop almost 80% of the time he has owned it... it was a lemon from the factory and he's been through hell getting it fixed properly... and yet he still believes in polaris, and they're still working with him on it... lets see someone else with a yam or honda or any other quad deal with their company for this long and not get the shaft. cheers!

 

"More features, actually more useful features like radiation and tridioding you only see on the Sportsman 800 EFI's and a few other of the Sportsman category now" What's that all about ? Radiation?...Is the 800 Nuclear powered?
What the heck is tridioding?

Yet Honda is so good with it's 1 quad with IRS, just getting disc brakes now etc. Sure they are reliable, but so is my bicycle. It's slow, uncomfortable, has no features, but it never breaks and doesn't require much maintenance.

As for Bomb/Can-Am...I had an 04 outlander max that had more than it's share of issues with being "tuff".

I agree that the media seems to think that if it's a U.S. company the products must be junk.

 

And that is why it is so important for us "Buy American" types to rally together to educate people, because the media kills everything American made for no good reason. Example: A magazine did a comparison between a Japanese made fullsize truck and the newly re-done Ford F150, (recently... forget where then they updated that model, sorry i'm a dodge guy [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] ) anyway, it was literally right after the new ford debuted and it goet lower marks in the reliability category. How can anyone tell that is would not be a reliable vehicle if it just debuted!?! An appropriate score would be N/A or "Remains to be seen" but no, the publication actually gave the win in that category to the foreign made vehicle. This is evidence of an OBVIOUS bias in the media. (i don't know what publication this was, nor the model, i thought it was a honda, but i don't think they have a fullsize...) Anyway, the point is that we Polaris owners really need to educate people as to the true performance of these things, like i do with the YFZ and Suzuki guy i ride with. They were ASTOUNDED when i beat them both w/ my LE, and couldn't belive all the magazines are blatantly lying about the Predator's awesome performance. Oh well i'm gonna go cool off now and take a nap before work...