2014

[TJRTX]

Ive owned a cat or yamaha my whole life and the way each manufacturer puts their sleds and programs together it seem vey improbable that they would merge. I think cat would be even more reluctent than yamaha with such a move, considering their much bigger,established, race program, and their lack of attention to detail compared to yamaha. And their demographics for riders are quite far apart also. I could see cat and pol a much more likely connection.With all this merger talk, i wonder if its not with a oem at all and instead with a plastic suspension or m-10 type deal,wich would be great in my book. Just a thought.

 

[soldi]

I could se Yamaha owning majority share in a joint engine company/facility. Building artic two strokes and marine or atv engines.. That company would own licenses and so forth... Would let Yamaha make money on two stroke snowmobile technology without building two strokes...

 

[journeyman]

I looked at the facebook page on this last night and one clown commented.....something of the sort of "whoopie, it's like Kia and Mini Cooper merging and telling us they are going to build a truck."

Then I looked at his profile and without mentioning anything here, I knew why this guy wasn't too bright. Nuff said.....

 

[tapp1]

I looked at the facebook page on this last night and one clown commented.....something of the sort of "whoopie, it's like Kia and Mini Cooper merging and telling us they are going to build a truck."

Then I looked at his profile and without mentioning anything here, I knew why this guy wasn't too bright. Nuff said.....

Yeah I saw that too. Made me go hmmm? I doubt it. The rider scope demographics aren't really riding Yamaha's. Someone even went to stay they haven't changed since 2003. Oh well. Makes you laugh.

 

[yamajammer76]

This is an interesting excerpt from their Jan 24th earnings conference call. Obviously, pretty vague, but take from it what you will:

Scott Hamann - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Okay. And I know that you said you are going to have (4 skis of the) Wildcat out in fiscal ‘13 and you did accomplished that, now as we look into fiscal ’14, I mean is it safe to assume that there will be additional introductions into the side-by-side category?

Claude Jordan - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
I think it will be very safe to assume that. Going forward, we have talked about this product development. We continue to invest in that you saw during my comments we said year-to-date our R&D is up 15%, there is a lot of opportunities we are just scratching the surface in terms of different directions we can go. So, I think you are going to see across the board, where we are going to continue to go hit and rollout new products not just on the ATV and the side-by-side, but also on the snowmobile side as well. And we are extremely excited about bringing the engines in house and giving us a little bit more flexibility in terms of direction we are going to go on the snow side.

Well that tells me they are going in-house on their engines. I'm not sure if he means 100% or not, but by reading that it sounds like they are not partnering with anyone. I'm not sure I would want one of their "all new" engines especially a high tech 4 stroke, but I'm sure they will find plenty of loyal Arctic Cat guinea pigs.

I would assume if AC is really going to start building their own engines and also re-badge sleds for Yamaha then I doubt that AC is going to be building any "in-house" 4 strokes.

Unless you have to have a green hood I can't see why you would chose an unproven engine over an engine with years of quality and research backing it up.

I don't know what is going to happen. Maybe nothing and Yamaha will show us a couple new models and things will just continue on as they always have. Maybe we will just get ProCrosses painted blue along with a few ill fitting parts and missing fasteners. Hopefully the Yamaha dealers will stock a lot of those expensive AC drive belts too which seem to fail every 500 miles.

I guess we will find out in a few days.

 

[Phazernut]

I think that if this thread keeps going by the time the 20th comes around we will have all 4 companies merged into one big mother company making just one sled that works for everyone. We will all get together and sing Kumbya.........

 

[rupprider]

Phazernut, Hey where did you read that?Uhhh,Bonsoir! lol

 

[bottlerocket]

POLMACATDOO!!!!

 

[blueironranger]

I think that if this thread keeps going by the time the 20th comes around we will have all 4 companies merged into one big mother company making just one sled that works for everyone. We will all get together and sing Kumbya.........

I'm looking forward to the new Crossrushpex XFXPXTX sled, with the all new 3 stroke almost direct injection and a 399.99# dry weight

 

[DeepFrz]

I don't mean to steer the conversation in a different direction, but is it possible that Yamaha might be phasing out its snowmobile line entirely? It could explain all the high rebate offers right now. Maybe the big meeting in Minneapolis is to alert the dealers that Yamaha will strictly be providing engines for Cats in the future and nothing more


I know its far out there, but is it possible?

 

[TRUE BLUE SINCE 1980]

I don't mean to steer the conversation in a different direction, but is it possible that Yamaha might be phasing out its snowmobile line entirely? It could explain all the high rebate offers right now. Maybe the big meeting in Minneapolis is to alert the dealers that Yamaha will strictly be providing engines for Cats in the future and nothing more


I know its far out there, but is it possible?

Huh, Wait What!

 

[09nytro]

No I don't think that would happen

 

[yamajammer76]

I don't mean to steer the conversation in a different direction, but is it possible that Yamaha might be phasing out its snowmobile line entirely? It could explain all the high rebate offers right now. Maybe the big meeting in Minneapolis is to alert the dealers that Yamaha will strictly be providing engines for Cats in the future and nothing more


I know its far out there, but is it possible?

I'd say there is about a 0.1% chance of that happening. On Chris Reids blog he said there is a lot more to look forward to then just BNG for 2014.

Tomas says:
Come on cant you give us a little teaser on whats comming! If this year is bng i will drive a poo next year.
Definitely more than BNG, what kind of poo do you like? cr

That doesn't sound like they are exiting the sled business to me.

He also states how good some of their engineers are in Wisconsin and how hard they have been working on new things. That doesn't sound like a company ready to exit a market does it?

 

[ViperTurboPete]

I don't mean to steer the conversation in a different direction, but is it possible that Yamaha might be phasing out its snowmobile line entirely? It could explain all the high rebate offers right now. Maybe the big meeting in Minneapolis is to alert the dealers that Yamaha will strictly be providing engines for Cats in the future and nothing more


I know its far out there, but is it possible?

I don't think that will happen either, but it is definitely an interesting turn of events in the rumour mill.

 

[Paraclete]

If Yami is buying 51% of Cat they will call the shots
it is that simple. People call it a merger but it goes like this

everyone who want to keep Yami say aye
everyone who want to keep Catsay aye
Ok Cat you loose.
This is an over simplification but one thing is for sure they did not buy Cat to get out of the biz