I am going on what this Rep told me, he seemed pretty confident that Yamaha was working on and testing a 850 Griz, Yamaha is pretty tight lipped on new products, you would not know a thing till it hits the showrooms floor.
The next all new grizz will still be a single, but it will make about 60-65hp and use technology gained from many years of YZ four stroke technology, the can am and polaris twins weigh right at a half ton, burn a lot of fuel and break a lot of stuff, yamaha will never play that game, maybe yamaha will put a twin in an all new raptor and market it as a scrambler and renegade killer but not in the grizz or kodiak.
You could be right, but Yamaha likes to co share engines, makes the 850 more useable, they are already using them in the wolverine, the Kodiak will stay with the 700 I would think.
What I have heard or read over the last year or so is that Yamaha is/was interested in developing an ATV to compete with the bigger CanAm's and Polaris's, but when running the numbers its not a profitable move. They are better off developing their SxS platform from a $$$ perspective.
Another bit I had heard was that they have some prototypes but the concern is that testers came back and said for daily riding they preferred the current Grizzly as it was much more nimble and just rode better. To handle the twin package and extra power, the concern is to make it reliable it becomes excessively heavy and cooling gets to be an issue as well.
But in my opinion an 850 at this point is dumb, if they want to go up against the renegades and scramblers, they need to develop something in the high 9XX cc range and be a machine that would be stripped down on weight to a point that it would only appeal to the 0.01% of the ATV crowd. The person who doesnt care about any utility capability and is willing to dish out $15K for an ATV that will eat another $2500 a year in parts to keep it running.
To be honest I was surprised to see Polaris release the two new 55" machines this year.
DirtTrax did a segment on that bike. Looks like it could be popular for a racing circuit and military applications. I'm not interested in buying one, but I would like to take one for a rip.
I dought it. Yamaha is only 2 years in on the new 686 so I think they will keep it in the lineup a few more years. Now if they do that and add bigger twin to the Grizzly line that would be sweet.
One of the reasons the Grizzly 700 is so reliable is its lower HP compared to Can AM and Polaris, more power means more pressure on drivetrain, Yamaha has found that balance at 50 ponies with the 700 to keep the Griz reliable, Honda has used lower powered but torquey engines like forever in their ATV's and also built a reputation for being reliable, SXS are a different story though, for Yamaha to up the power in the Griz to 65-70 Hp would drop the reliability on the Griz if they kept the same platform, a all new Griz would have to be built to house a twin, Yamaha's focus seems to be on SXS's not ATV's at this time.
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