I think your Prairie 300 had 4wd. The present Prairie 300 is a 2wd unless they've changed it again.

 

I should also say, look at the Arctic Cat TRV as well as the 2 up model Polaris . Any bike around 500 cc's should be sufficiently powerful.

 

Kawasaki only has the Brute Force 300 2wd and the Brute Force 750 now. They quit making everything else in 2013 I think. They had the Prairie 360 4x4, which was a good utility machine. Not very fast but had plenty of torque for work duties. I think they also built both the Brute Force 650i and 650 sra like mine until 2013 as well. After that, it was just the 300 and 750 in the utility line.

 

That was not very smart of Kawasaki to do that, the Praire 300 & 400 were good selling machines and for the most part bullit proof. Yes mine was a 4wd, in a utility machine why would anyone not want 4wd? They also sold a lot of the 360 models.....wonder why they just went to 2wd only? When I was shopping last year the atv sales were down in general but mostly due to increase sales in SxS's. Some of the dealers I spoke with did not even carry 2wd atv's except for kids models and mabey one real inexpensive base model, but everything else was all 4wd. As one dealer mentioned anything 400cc and up is sold as 4wd unless some type of sport machine, same with the SxS's, no one had a 2wd in stock.

 

Can't understand Kawasaki on the lack of a 500 cc machine. Prairie was a workhorse and did all but high speed well. Around the time they discontinued it I noticed there were some Polaris machines with a bigger engine, and IRS that weren't that much more.

 

The Brute Force 300 is good 2wd machine but its meant to be an entry level machine for beginning riders. A Brute Force 500 is something Kawasaki should have been building for the last 5 years. Yamaha has basically done the same. I don't even think they have the Grizzly 300 even anymore. Its just the Kodiak 700 and Grizzly 700. I think they have some youth models but the 700cc machines are it in the full size utility lineup. Look at how many models Polaris has. Suzuki, Arctic Cat, and Can-am as well. I think the Brute Force 750 is a very good machine but something less expensive with 4x4 would appeal to a lot of people not wanting to spend so much money. Those people are buying Sportsman 450HO's and Outlander 450L's instead.

 

Recently talked to a couple fellows that have been shopping for atv/utv's recently, mentioned tht dealers are also frustrated with the limited selection of machines. The higher end bigbore atv's are up in price driving sales towards UTV's, and their is little to choose from in lower budget 4wd atv's so the dealers are missing out on many sales. A few mfgrs have a bare bones 4wd, but not in stock for fear of not selling so nobody wants to wait for weeks to order so some sales are not being made. Not everyone looking for an offroad machine has 10 grand to dump in a toy that only gets used a few times a year. Wasn't that many years back that there was a good selection in a wide range of prices from basic to well outfitted machines.
Hard to find a really good used machine and the dealers want an arm and a leg for used machines.

 

My dealer has tons of used units in stock. They used to be a dealer that only sold used units. Now they sell almost everything. But the best deals are on the used machines with high miles. The reason I was able to find mine is I guess nobody wanted a Brute Force that didn't have irs. I could have bought a 2014 Sportsman 800 for the same price but the 800 had over 8000 miles on it. Wasn't willing to buy a used machine with that many miles. I saw they later even discounted it more in a big sale and sold it for even less. And that was about 4 months later. Most of the older machines priced less do have high miles.