{"id":2667,"date":"2005-12-21T03:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-21T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2005\/12\/23-ski-doo\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:02:04","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:02:04","slug":"23-ski-doo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2005\/12\/23-ski-doo\/","title":{"rendered":"23 Ski-Doo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n

Winter officially rolls in at 1:35 PM today. In northern climes, of course, folks have been experiencing
\nwinter<\/a> for some time. Northern Connecticut has plenty of snow for Chris David to try out the Ski-Doo
\nélan<\/a> that his father, popular Mustang<\/a> and Tonka<\/a> authority Dennis David, purchased from a neighbor who was clearing out his shed.<\/p>\n

“Ski-Doo” is so well known that it’s become almost a generic substitute for “snowmobile.” That’s with some justification, since Ski-Doo<\/a> is made by Bombardier Recreational Products. Armand Bombardier<\/a> formed L’Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée in Quebec in 1942 to manufacture tracked vehicles for use on snow, of which the Ski-Doo is a direct descendant. The
\nB-series Bombardier<\/a>, powered by a
\nrear-mounted<\/a> Ford V8, was used extensively in the Canadian north – I came across this one in Newfoundland in 1993. The concept was also applied to farm tractors, and accessory “Bombardier tracks”<\/a> were popular with Ford tractor owners who operated on wet ground. Today, Bombardier, Ltd. makes trains<\/a> and boats<\/a> and planes<\/a>, including transit cars for cities in Europe, North America and China and regional and business jet aircraft. The latter include the well-known Learjet<\/a> line. During the 1980s, they built a version of the Volkswagen Iltis<\/a> for the Canadian armed forces.<\/p>\n

Bombardier Recreational Products<\/a>, purchased from Bombardier, Ltd. by the Bombardier family in 2003, includes not only Ski-Doo but also Sea-Doo<\/a> personal watercraft and sport boats, and Johnson<\/a> and Evinrude<\/a> outboard motors. The latter two nameplates were acquired when Bombarder purchased Outboard Marine Corporation in 2001.<\/p>\n

The élan, built from 1971 to 1996<\/a>, is a lightweight machine, very popular in the snowmobile boom of the early 1970s and with sufficient following to stay in production for 25 years. The engine is an Austrian-built
\nsingle-cylinder unit<\/a> by Rotax<\/a>, another Bombardier company. The
\ncontrols<\/a> are simple, and the
\nseating<\/a> is roomy enough for two.<\/p>\n

Is the Ski-Doo an automobile? Well, it’s a self-propelled land vehicle and it does have
\nwheels<\/a>, although they don’t actually touch the ground. I consider it an automobile, but it remains to be seen if Dennis<\/a> will add snowmobile appraisals<\/a> to his lines of business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter officially rolls in at 1:35 PM today. In northern climes, of course, folks have been experiencing winter for some time. Northern Connecticut has plenty of snow for Chris David to try out the Ski-Doo élan that his father, popular Mustang and Tonka authority Dennis David, purchased from a neighbor who was clearing out his….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3407,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/3407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}