We obtained a copy of an email which was recently sent to some midwest dealers by their Arctic Cat Sales Rep. It’s a bit baffling, but at the same time, gives us Arctic Cat brand lovers some hope of a continued future for Arctic Cat snowmobiles! Read it below:
ARCTIC CAT IS ADDING NEW DEALERS???? SAY WHHHHAAAAATTT? Yep, we are just as stunned as you! Is this proof there is continued life at Arctic Cat? Has the company been sold? Why else would they add two new dealers?
Regardless of the future, ArcticInsider would like to welcome both Pat’s Motorsports and Hauck Powersports to the Arctic Cat family. Both, are exceptional dealers.
Now, talk amongst yourselves!
Ohh wow that’s awesome to hear can’t wait to find out who purchased arctic cat 😀
I’ve been riding cat since 1970
And I’m a loyal cat man.
My neighbor calls me Cat Daddy !!!
That’s GREAT!
Wish I new about this earlier. We stopped at Pat’s today and got fuel. There little white dog sleeping on the counter next to the cash register. Never woke up with all the people paying for gas.
I believe both of these dealers were prior Yamaha dealers, and because Yamaha is getting out of the sled manufacturing business, these dealers would be just replacing their lost Yamaha sales. So l wouldn’t get too excited about it, but it’s a start.
What would be interesting to see is Arctic Cat’s market share numbers for the last 10 years.
Snow
ATV
Utility SXS
Sport SXS
by interesting… you mean depressing
Yeah, the production numbers and sales numbers are always a giant secret. I would love to know the market share of all brands currently and in the last several years! big secret!
Production numbers are semi secret, but market share numbers are published in power sports business, and other industry publications.
I used to get the Baird dealer survey, and the results. Arctic Cat eventually became so insignificant, and the dealer surveys so sour, that they abandoned doing it. Besides Baird, I used to get quarterly calls from a couple other analysts, but that had stopped long ago.
I filled out a bunch of those Baird surveys, right up till they decided Arctic Cat wasn’t worth doing anymore
Reading through the dealer comments was always a good laugh. At least we knew we weren’t the only dealer getting shafted by unethical programs, and lack of product development.
That’s the thing though Arctic Cat should absolutely be targeting every Yamaha dealer in the snowbelt to add Arctic Cat snowmobiles as a winter line. Of course Textron isn’t smart enough to figure it out, but with Yamaha leaving they should have inked a deal to offer a line of redesigned and updated Yamaha powered 4 stroke sleds. They could have even made a deal where a logo appeared on the sled… “Yamaha Genesis 4-Stroke Inside” like the “Intel Inside” logo on PCs. Yamaha still has a lot of loyal 4 stroke customers that would be most likely to switch to Arctic Cat if they offer Yamaha engines. If design budgets are too tight to do a ground up redesign for the 4 strokes a lot of improvements and cosmetic changes could be made to the ProCross to bring it more in-line with the Catalyst. Textron doesn’t have a clue. Someone who does please buy this brand. Please!
Yamaha already said they aren’t supply Cat with engines anymore
Adding Yamaha’s 1% share to their market share isn’t going to do much. It’s a sad state of the snowmobile industry because it’s dependant on snow and 2 bad snow years in a row is very bad for snowmobiling as a whole.
Yamaha doesn’t seem interested in continuing to building snowmobile engines in the future. Probably one of the reasons for Arctic Cat stopping production, no reliable long term engine supplier!
Last fall Cat also added a dealer in Parry Sound, Ontario: Georgian Bay Trailers. They were added before the Textron production pause announcements.
As for market share, skidoo openly claimed of having over 60% in 2022. That would have left Polaris, Cat and Yamaha splitting less than 40% at that time.
I believe Gunner Arlaud said on one of his podcasts last December that Cat had sold 4500 858 sleds. Probably they have sold more since then so that would put 858 sales at roughly 5% of North American sled sales, which are generally around 100K per year.
I believe that 4500 number would have been the build number for the year IMO.
I think folks would be more interested in everyone seeing how the numbers have changed over the last 10 years (mostly for those who feel textron has done a good job).
What year was the God-Awful primer grey
2020 & 2021 models ! Lucky me I sold mine. Buddy is trying to give his away and still no takers.
the 18 800 early release was all grey IIRC
I listened to the podcast again and you’re correct he said they made 4500 so I stand corrected.
I had a 2018 XC 600 in the primer grey. Couldn’t stand it, so I wrapped it with a wrap from Octane Ink and it looked great.
If Textron was smart they should have left the doors open and everything up and running to make it easier to sell the company.
The E-Z-Go morons are not smart.
With the EV madness ending , these companies won’t be forced to waste millions (billions?) developing electric recreation vehicles. Trump may save the moto sports industry.
It’s also possible that Textron is adding dealers to help with liquidation if they decide that selling Arctic Cat in pieces brings more value to the shareholders then selling as an ongoing concern. The more places they have to offload inventory of machines, clothing and parts the better. I know that would be a very sad ending to a brand we all love so much, but as the days go by with nothing but crickets that possibility is very real.
They don’t have any clothing to offload. In their infinite wisdom textron offloaded/licensed the clothing/and trinkets business to a company named powertex several years ago.
There is apparently no end to the malignant stupidity of the E-Z-Go morons.
Why is there a lot of bugs in the new catilast so glad we didn,t buy one for 2025. Our 15 and 18 cats have Ben flalist with some maintenance by me.
I own a 2024 Riot 600 and it’s been very reliable without any major issues. I think the 600 Catalyst models are fine. It seems the 858 is a bit half baked, but it just needs some work and development to get it to where it needs to be. The problem is there are no engineers left to do that.
In their latest announcement they say the layoffs are “permanent”. 385 at TRF and 19 at St. Cloud. Not looking good.