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When John Deere entered the snowmobile business in the early 1970s, Ski-Doo was king, which explains why the early Deere models emulated the French-Canadian sleds in style and overall design. By the time Deere exited the business about a decade later, it had established its own style and technology.
Leading the charge for Deere was the low-slung, Kawasaki-powered Liquifire series. Because Deere used "customer" engines from Kawasaki, the Liquifire was adequately powered, but not ferocious. Deere engineers cleverly turned to other tricks to make them some of the best performing sleds of the early 1980s.
The companies of the time that had their own engine supplier like Yamaha, Kawasaki or Ski-Doo, with Rotax, demanded a higher-powered engine for their performance sleds. Most of Deere's competitors could ask for and get more power than Deere could.
So Deere improved the performance of its sleds by working on such concepts as power-to-weight. That explains why production Liquifires were lighter than their contemporaries.
Deere engineers also worked hard on making performance sleds extremely nimble. In fact, at one of the more famous snowmobile magazine shootouts of the time, Deere sleds - though trailing in high-speed testing - were among the quickest handling.
The Liquifire series embraced a great deal of what Deere snowmobile engineers had learned on the cross-country racing circuits. Nimble handling, rugged design, centered weight mass, spot-on clutching, lowered engine, wide ski stance - all these attributes, and overall lightness, worked well for racing and made the sled just right for the real world too.
Through years of racing the arduous Winnipeg-to-St. Paul 500-mile marathon, Deere learned the hard way. The company's first efforts were hardly spectacular. Ford Motor Co. also learned the hard way. Racing at the 24 Hours of LeMans in the mid-1960s, Ford discovered racing requires a different level of commitment in resources - human and financial. Like Ford, Deere committed to a goal and succeeded. In the process, its snowmobiles evolved as lightweight, exceptional handling machines that could be counted on day after day.
Deere found that overall power - while nice - wasn't essential to creating a winning performance sled. Having a sled with balance and a suspension design that could handle all kinds of terrain meant more than sheer power. Using computer design, Deere engineers developed a rear suspension with swing arms that kept the sled flat over the dirtiest bumps. Keep in mind that groomed trails were not nearly as smooth 20 years ago. Mogul-sucking suspension design was critical and a great selling point.
The supplied Kawasaki twins in the Deeres were good, but by the 1983 model, the Liquifire's liquid-cooled 440cc twin gave away more than 150cc and upward of 30 horsepower to its competition - Polaris Indy 600 and Ski-Doo Blizzard 9500. Yet, even with that disadvantage, on-snow testing showed that Deere's Liquifire could stay with the big guys through the 1/8-mile, but got clobbered beyond the ¼ in straightline speed tests.
In handling, Liquifire was an equal. And in fuel economy runs, the 440 twin passed gas at 25 mpg! There aren't many modern sleds of any performance level that can match that!
Deere hung on until the mid-1980s when it pulled the plug on its snowmobile division, whose parts and promise eventually ended up with Polaris' born-again management team. While in the business, Deere brought a level of professionalism and engineering expertise to the industry, culminating in the Liquifire.