I was surfing Yamaha's japan web-site and I came across a press release concerning their mid-term management plan. One of the items in there was the ATV sales and broad goals there. Here is what it says...

(ATV business)
The ATV business made a significant contribution to the company's overall performance during the previous medium term, due to increased demand and favorable sales of new models in the United States.

In the new medium term, the company will strive to expand sales and profits in mature markets, focusing on enhancing the automatic model line-up and expanding the production capability of the Atlanta plant (to more than 100,0000 units) in the United States. The sales target in the new medium-term management plan is 122 billion yen, a 17% increase over the results achieved during the previous medium term


...basically what I get from this is probably updated Grizzly or Kodiak models, with more automatics added to the line-up. What do you guys think???

YFM,
<<The ATV business made a significant contribution to the company's overall performance during the previous medium term, due to increased demand and favorable sales of new models in the United States.>>

sounds like they sold a boatload of them..new models, that would be raptor, grizzly, & kodiak..

<<the new medium term, the company will strive to expand sales and profits in mature markets, focusing on enhancing the automatic model line-up and expanding the production capability of the Atlanta plant (to more than 100,0000 units) in the United States.>>

we want to sell quads to buyers that have $$$ and have already owned one...we may look at the kodiak line and machines costing over 6K....

<< The sales target in the new medium-term management plan is 122 billion yen, a 17% increase over the results achieved during the previous medium term>>

we may offer more dealer incentives to move these models, as the competition from the other manufacturers is pretty good...

other than trying to decipher a quote from FED chairman about "irrational exuberance" your guess is as good as mine as what this REALLY means..other than they want a bigger market share & the R&D boys will be working on something..

I am still hearing that a royal star bike is on hold, waiting for inventory to be sold off before going back in production..that has been the case for 2 years..now they don't even make my bike anymore...but it has a 5 yr warranty..& is based on their falgship tour model..

so there just isn't any way of telling what they are thinking..they have always been real tight lipped about their plans..until the new release date..

They need more hi-performance quads. They need the put the yzf426 in a quad that weighs around 350lbs. Come on yamaha.

Makes enough sense to me. I'm getting a grizz, the only reason I held out was to see what was going to be available from honda, being that I am quite happy with my first honda purchase. I didn't make it to the rincon release to pass my judgement though( maybe it was the missing features, or the flaky adds comparing it directly to sugared over yuppie utes, the ultimate UNdriving machines.) I dunno if any of you sport quadders noticed but the ute's are where the sales are and have been. Mind you on a tiny insight I have in the ute market may be glutted out in less than five years as deer hunting oppurtunity dries up over vast areas from CWD control efforts. There may be a dramatic shift in marketting/manufactering and sales if the utes show any hicupps. (The fact that hunters may be buying the majority of utes is probably lost somewhere in the boardroom in Japan. The american marketting knows though.)

Now for the ute drivers: what is there to enhance about the bloody grizz anyhow, it's got it ALL, okay...fuel injection, turbocharger, 10to1 compression and better stock rubber, shoot then it's outrun their raptor, see the tough problems here?