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The Face-OffTruth was, snowmobilers wanted the Indy! Compared to the Cutlass, the Indy was an ugly duckling.
Although hatched from the same engineering department, the Cutlass and Indy would enjoy dissimilar fates. The Indy would take Polaris to No. 1 in the market.
The substance of the Indy's ride, race-bred handling and liquid-cooled powerplants would prove more popular with snowmobilers than the award-winning style, "traditional" leaf sprung front suspension and fan-cooled engines of the Cutlass. The Cutlass would hang on for seven seasons as Polaris' family of low-cost trail sleds.
By 1983, Polaris acknowledged that it had a major winner in the Indy and that the Cutlass series, the design they had thought would propel Polaris to increased market share, would need to fade away.
That was the year Polaris placed a 432cc fan-cooled twin into an Indy chassis. The Indy Trail was born. Though it retailed for $900 more than a Cutlass 440 with essentially the same Fuji-built motor, the new Indy Trail was an instant hit.
This was the year when Polaris dropped the "TX" designations and went with "Indy." Polaris was committed to the Indy as it charged into a dominant role in snowmobiling for the next decade.