Last week I spent a brief amount of time at Arctic Cat following the successful Class 5 Rally. I was nice of the town to roll out the carpet for us with their traditional ArcticInsider-decal-welcoming (squint really hard at the lower left corner).
Twin Spar machines were on the snowmobile assembly line. Specifically, it was 2013 T500 touring models. According to Troy Skime, Cat was in starting about two weeks worth of production on Twin Spar sleds.
That's cool, but I admit to being a little bummed that we'd missed seeing production of the new F800 Sno Pro RR by just a couple days!
Someone said that they were building 2013 model year 500 XTs on the ATV line, but I was unable to confirm it because they were impossible to see. Damn that camouflage paint!
The Prowler line was busy assembling 700 HDX models. Not surprisingly, these machines have been a huge hit. Credit goes in part to their easy storage and the ability for two passengers to ride shotgun.
Every time I walk through the production area at Arctic Cat, my eyes wander at the crazy number of cool things to view. On this day, I paused at the hood art containing some old favorites from the past 19 years.
I will probably always be enamored by the original ZR hood (top row, sixth from the left). What an amazing machine that was!
Perhaps the coolest wall art that I noticed was this bulletin board showing off "Employee Pride," in the form of employees' personal snowmobiles, ATVs and side-by-sides.
Sadly, my stay at Cat was so brief that I was unable to visit with all the people that I normally get to see. However, I did see Gary Nelson, who was proudly displaying some of his T-Shirt collection, including this well-loved number from the one (and so-far ONLY) Arctic Cat Hometown Tour in 2001.
Gary started collecting used T-shirts when I started mailing to him some of mine. If you have some loved Arctic Cat-related shirts that you think Gary would like, I highly recommend sending them to him.
On another note, I still have strong hopes that the Hometown Tour will be reprised, as it was an awesome event that captured all that is great about Arctic Cat and its riders.
As I walked out the doors for my drive home, I was struck by the lineup of motorcycles in employee parking. Harley-Davidson, KTM, Honda, Indian, Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki, Triumph and others were represented.
That's it for this brief report from Arctic Cat. I'll be back there in a couple weeks and I promise a much longer and more in-depth report on what's happening at my favorite place in the world.
Thanks for reading.
