Why on earth would they do away with the 700 engine and go back to the 650? Seems like a step backward. I mean... the 700 Prairie met and exceeded all expectations of it. Heck, it blew them all away. The 650 disappeared into the shadows real quick when the 700 came out, simply because nobody missed it. Personally, I'm gonna see if I can't get one of those '05 700's.

 

A better question is why they spent all the money needed to make and release the 700 in the 1st place when the 650 engine was capable of the same powerlevels if just unrestricted. They could have sold at the same cost and still been the performance leader without needing a new engine until now. Retooling for new engines every two years is whats pushing the prices up every release. But it all fell down to publicity and bragging rights, and the general uneducated public will look at the number on the side vs. the power it puts out.

As for dropping back to the 650, sales wise they want a bigger gap in performance between the models. Having 2 that are too close together will confuse some people and split big-bore sales between the 2, making neither appear to sell that well. But if 1 has a much bigger/more powerful engine, the bigbore crowd will pay extra for it, driving up its sales numbers. Again, publicity and bragging rights.

 

This is nuts! whatever happened to the good ol' days when things were simple?

 

Just seems rather pointless to discontinue a tried and true, proven design like the 700 with a SRA, especially if they're planning on putting out a 800cc SRA in 2006. Why not keep the Prairie name on the roster, and simply bump it up to 800 when they want to? That way, they have more options available for the public to choose from.

 

... I don't mean to saound like an a$$hol@- but time will tell. I personally feel a great loss with the canning of the Prairie, but you never can tell with manufacturers these days what they're gonna pull outta their a$$es. Just as when Chevrolet released the Inpala SS for 3 years in the mid 90's and just when ya thought that the manufacturer was gonna start building real cars again they can the whole program and end up handing the whole market over to Ford with their Crown Vic, for lack of a better car available. So at this pont the best I could tell anyone is to get themselves a 2005 P700; their color of choice, and hang with that- you can always make it bigger.

 

I know this has been said many times but just to clear it up, The prarrie is not realy dead maybe a little short on cc's for now but the BF650 is a prarrie even the plastic is interchangable, The Brute Force name was used do to market research that told Kawi that consumers did not like the prairie name myself included, Brute Force sounds alot meaner, tougher , and ect ect than prarie does. no big deal, I do however realy like the improved plastic on the BF650. No more cracked out little black fender extentions.

 

But people still want SRA.....

 

I was at the Kawi dealer today using their spring compressing tool to change secondary spring on my Prairie 700, and I looked at a BF 650 parked right next to a Prairie 700. They have identical chassis, with different plastic bodywork. The BF650 has much taller plastic body work compared to the Prairie, and I must say that after looking at the two different body styles side by side, that I am glad I bought my 2005 Team Green Prairie 700. Maybe someday that BF bodywork will grow on me, but it hasn't started to yet.


OL

 

The BF650 is SRA, Thats exacly what we have been talking about, how the SRA, BF650/P700/P650/Twin Peaks are all the same quad just different name and plastic give or take a few CC's ,

PS. housefullofkawi; The 300ex and the 250ex are not on the same chassis. the recon and the 250ex do however share the same chassis just different plastic, plus or minus racks, and I think the gear ratios might be set different also. Susuki does the same thing with there 250 entry level quads the ozark/250z same quad just different plastic and name. just FYI not trying to pic any fights here.

 

That's right- the 250X was Honda's resopnse to the onslaught of lywers in '87. It was essentially a 200X with 50cc more and another wheel. Essentially what you see in the 300ex but it had a kickstart.