savage on sleds a second first

Last issue I told you American Snowmobiler was starting its 25th season, one reason you keep seeing that stunning “25 Years” logo on this page. And I told you that our first issue hit your mailboxes in September 1986. But at that point we were known as Lake Country Snowmobile Tracks, quite a mouthful.

That intro was our first “first.” By September of 1989 we were ready for our second “first,” our first edition of American Snowmobiler. That’s when founding editor Jerry Bassett renamed the tabloid and added color to the cover, in this case a raspberry red Ski-Doo Safari LX.

Cover price was $1.75 and AmSnow was no longer just a publication for 10,000 folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was now being distributed in Illinois, Iowa and Michigan, covering a broader portion of the Midwest and an average issue was in 22,000 subscribers hot little hands.

As Jerry said, we’d outgrown Lake Country (hey, I’m a Hoosier and that portion of the Midwest is mostly prairie, not lake!). But our intent was still to give you the inside scoop and the “most honest evaluations about snowmobiles and products that we can.” We’re still doing just that and now our circulation reaches from coast to coast and well into Canada, an area where we’ve been growing the past few years, and we have some readers overseas too. That’s just numbers though.

We’re about fun and what’s fun about looking back is seeing what was hot as the snowmobile world was charging into 1990.

First, Polaris was celebrating its 35th anniversary after starting out as a farm equipment firm and job shop. Edgar Hetteen was the driving force and he hooked up with brother Allan, along with David Johnson. Officially the firm became a snowmobile maker in the winter of 1954-55.
Back in 1989, Polaris was touting its $200 million in annual sales. Its 2009 annual sales hit $1.6 billion. Wow!

Elsewhere in the 1989 issue we learned that there were 1.4 million registered snowmobilers in North America and 129,000 sleds sold in the U.S. and Canada. Last year registratons were 1.5 million, down from 1.65 million the year before. Worldwide snowmobile sales were about 111,500, again a dip due to a slow worldwide economy.

Ski-Doo had just been reorganized, again, the story says. Arctic Cat’s Joey Hallstrom, then a former racer, was named fulltime Team Arctic Racing Director. He’s now Cat’s product manager. In ads this issue, Ski-Doo was using the tagline, Our Edge is Performance, while Polaris’ motto was “Believe It.” Arctic Cat was touting itself as “World Class Snowmobiles” and Yamaha’s boast? “We make the difference.”

Some things stay pretty constant!