AmSnow.com is now SnoWest.com
I cannot, in good conscience, allow the anniversary to pass on what I believe to be one the coolest sleds ever produced, the Yamaha Vmax-4.
Yes, it’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, Yamaha shoehorned a 750cc 2-stroke inline four into a snowmobile and slapped one of the brand’s most enduring model names on the hood.
I ended up owning two of these monsters and if I ever have the opportunity to buy another clean example at a fair price, I probably will. A story like this would normally be penned by
AmSnow’s resident vintage sled expert Les Pinz and appear on the back page of
AmSnow, but this one had to be mine … Sorry, Les.
As is typical with nearly anything with a motor attached to it, the quest for speed and supremacy is a goal of designers and marketers. Snowmobiles are no exception.
The early ’90s, however, seemed to push this exploration of horsepower to the extreme, resulting in machines that could truly carry the moniker “muscle sled.” It really started with the war between the Minnesotans; the Polaris Indy 650 and the Arctic Cat Wildcat 650, and continued with the super-fast, sometimes forgotten, Ski-Doo Mach 1. The culmination of all this adrenaline led to the production of sleds with names Storm, Mach Z, Thundercat, and Vmax-4.
These brutish, boorish machines usually came with several price tags. … One which was paid in, at the time, BIG dollars and the others paid in mechanical finicky-ness and sometimes rampant unreliability the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the 1960s and ’70s.
But the Vmax-4 was a different animal entirely. Here was a muscle sled that had the fit, finish, reliability, “trailability,” and engineering of a Japanese company that had come to be known for all of these attributes. What Yamaha may have left on the table in the past for speed or styling they tried to make up for with the Vmax-4.
The heritage
Consider this machine’s heritage. Those with a bit of motorsports knowledge have heard of the Yamaha TZ750 road race bike, one of the most successful and storied racing motorcycles of all time. The TZ750 started out in 1973 as a 700cc model and eventually helped propel racers such as Kenny Roberts to fame and in the process won eight, count them, eight straight Daytona 200 races, the equivalent of eight Eagle River Championships or, perhaps, X Games in stature. The Japanese are the masters of repurposing, well, almost everything, and the fact that the Vmax-4 engine is, for all practical purposes, a TZ750 mill, drives the cool factor through the roof immediately.
That engine platform was coupled with some ultra-cool technology, like the Vmax-4 being the first production sled to introduce flat-slide, rack mounted carbs. The clutch also didn’t hang on the end of the mile-long crankshaft, but instead was mounted to its own driveshaft, which drew power off the center of the crank (like Yamaha 4-strokes). Add to that factory aluminum skis; wide, straight handlebars; a headlight that actually worked; and an exhaust note that made everyone come outside and see what was up. You also ended up with a pretty neat ride. That is, if you could afford it.
Price was the first of a few snarls in the Vmax-4 legend, with the sticker in 1992 pushing nearly $8,000!!! The other peculiar item worth noting is that Yamaha chose to harness about 125+ ponies with a mechanical cable brake and a 0.75-inch lug track. Ergos on the early Vmax’s were weird too.
Yamaha must have produced 4 million identical dashboards when the Phazer came out in 1984 and decided to use them all up. And the seating position on early models forced those taller than 6 foot to become one with their kneecaps. There also were a few first and second year bugaboos that needed ironing out, but for those that kept their machines bone stock and just liked to ride, many didn’t experience so much as a hiccup.
Still, all in all, the Vmax-4 was a pretty cool buggy. It won so many races in the ’91-’92 season it was, essentially, banned from competition in USSA Formula III. The 1995 and up 800cc version is still drag raced in certain parts of the country and the cult following that this machine produced is nothing short of legendary.
Like a few sled models Yamaha produced, they awkwardly left the best for last. 1997 was the final production year of the Vmax-4 and it featured exactly what it probably always should have; about 12 inches of suspension travel in back, a nicer seat, and the hydraulic Nissin brake everyone had hoped for. Yamaha only sold a handful of 1997 Vmax-4s and that year and model have become coveted among Yamaha fanatics.
Despite being late to the dance in a few performance and chassis categories, the Vmax-4 revealed at least a glimpse of the technological possibilities that could be available to snowmobilers at the time. That’s even despite the fact that the foundation for the engine dated back to the early ’70s, when people were still shooting ether in the throats of the King Kat carburetors and cussing up a storm (no pun intended).
Tom Clement is AmSnow’s regular online columnist. You can read his columns here.