New Vid from Yamaha -

[earthling]

Jaret just posted video about why Yamaha exited snowmobiles on FB, hopefully he posts on YT soon

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=363593189686115

 

[sweetrides]

comment section was brutal lol

 

[STAIN]

This is both sad and understandable at the same time. If you look at it with an objective eye, it makes sense business wise.
Snowmobiling is a hobby that relies on passion to be involved. Looks like they don't have that passion anymore.
If I had the money and space, I would be in line for a 2025 special edition.
Oh well, I will ride my 2022 GT for as long as I feel excited to get on it, then move on to something else.

 

[Phatboyc]

He'll create another blog in the new year to "explain some other changes into Yamaha snowmobiles." What else is there to say?!

He could of at least hint at the continuity of AC engine contract.

 

[theCATman]

He's a damn puppet. No difference between him and a politician's press secretary. Talks in general circles, vague, mixes is a few big, "sophisticated" words to sound important, & attempts to tell everyone what they want to hear from a script.

But in the end we all just blankly stare at each other and think, WTF did he just say?

 

[1nc 2000]

Sad day for the snowmobile industry for sure.

 

[STAIN]

I feel kind of bad for him. The dude seems like he is really passionate about the sport--he has shown viewers his collection of older Yamaha sleds-- and probably thought he had his dream job.
Now his job is gone, I don't know if he will be reassigned within the company, but it certainly won't be the job he has now.
I know he takes a lot of flak by the minority for some of his videos but remember none of this is his fault. He is just telling us what he told.
Maybe someday there will be more to the story, but it seems pretty cut and dried.

 

[earthling]

I feel kind of bad for him. The dude seems like he is really passionate about the sport--he has shown viewers his collection of older Yamaha sleds-- and probably thought he had his dream job.
Now his job is gone, I don't know if he will be reassigned within the company, but it certainly won't be the job he has now.
I know he takes a lot of flak by the minority for some of his videos but remember none of this is his fault. He is just telling us what he told.
Maybe someday there will be more to the story, but it seems pretty cut and dried.

Agreed, he is just performing his role as a product manager. Messaging is hard, and the story is quite simple so not sure how we got sidetracked into political comparisons. Yamaha chose to move onto to markets where demand is growing faster, its that simple. He relayed that message pretty well, right up front "the decision came from japan" - end of story. It was pretty predictable in hindsight.

@theCATman we had a discussion about this back in Sept here. https://ty4stroke.com/threads/whats-happened-to-the-japanese-manufacturers-not-just-sleds.166672/

 

[theCATman]

@earthling.... am I wrong in any way? I certainly don't think so. You said it yourself, he's a mouthpiece. Nothing more. Hopefully there's another place for him within Yamaha Corp., nobody deserves to lose his/her job because of corporate decisions.

And don't accuse me of making this political, I didn't. I guess if my analogy offended you, that's on you.

 

[earthling]

@earthling.... am I wrong in any way? I certainly don't think so. You said it yourself, he's a mouthpiece. Nothing more. Hopefully there's another place for him within Yamaha Corp., nobody deserves to lose his/her job because of corporate decisions.

And don't accuse me of making this political, I didn't. I guess if my analogy offended you, that's on you.

No offence taken at all. I didn't say he is a mouthpiece though, I said he was doing his job as a product manager. As a product manager, its not easy to call out your bosses for a decision you don't agree with, or that disappoints you in the actions taken by the company. Most corporations would want to deflect that message as much as possible. JS called it straight, telling us it was corporate 'in Japan' that made the decision. I guarantee that was not a message that was easy to get past corporate for approval so either he did (good on him) or he didn't and said it anyhow (good on him). Deflection would have used all kinds of references about market forces, competition over wallet share, and rising interest rates. Thats not the message he delivered he told the story about as simply as he could.

 

[yamajammer76]

The fact is there was no product pipeline after the 2017 Sidewinder launched. What happened about 4 months after the new Sidewinder showed up in dealerships? Arctic Cat Inc. was purchased by Textron January 25, 2017. It was game over at that point for Yamaha since all the work they did on the Viper and Sidewinder was done with the old independent Arctic Cat. All the guys that worked on the joint venture were soon shown the door. Basically they had a new sled that just launched and they had to see it through. Basic improvements were made, but engineering on anything new was finished. The contract remained and although Covid messed with production in the end, the 2 stroke re-badged models were added for a little dealer volume and to help with contract purchase numbers.

When Yamaha shut down their R&D facilities in Wisconsin and most of the engineers were let go that was the best clue that Textron was done working with them.