In the original SnoPro series Gilles Villenueve showed up with his IFS front end Alouette and was all the talk of the town. It looked good, it was innovative, but at first… he couldn’t get it to finish a race. But with time and persistence, the twin trackers got better and better. The even poked through for a win here and there.
The other manufactures did not turn a blind eye to the Alouettes. Arctic took the threat seriously, and began their own twin track development plan.. of sorts. What evolved with the single Arctic Cat twin track snopro machine pictured here. Although finished at Arctic, it was actually built by an independent racer in the area. In fact, if you look close at the hood in this photo, you can see it says “designed and built by Roger Gage”. Roger worked for Arctic, but was working on this at home when Arctic asked him to bring it in. The machines was designed with a rear drive clutch system so as to disconnect the inside track from driving a well – much like the later Ski-Doo twin trackers.
Arctic created the fiberglass and got one of the 440 Snopro engines installed, and did some testing on the machine. They brought it out to one race, but it was never officially run. Shortly thereafter, it disappeared.
That is until a collector found it (he wishes to remain anonymous) not far from his home. The nose of the fiberglass was broken off, but other than that, it was in tact. He brought it home and went to work on it. The glass went up to Kenny Halverson in Thief River Falls. Kenny had done some of the work on the fiberglass originally. He very nearly had it completed when disaster struck. Kenny’s barn, and all the contents went up in a fire ball.
The chassis, motor and and all the other parts are safe. But the original glass is gone for good. Undaunted, the current owner plans to work with Kenny to completely rebuild the fiberglass and have this sled restored when time permits. You can be assured that when he does, we’ll bring you the full story in all it’s glory.
So. Where are the rest of the known 74 Cat Snopros? We’ll tackle the first of them in the next installment.