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Shakeups come along in every industry, sometimes every few years, sometimes only once every decade. The snowmobile business has seen its fair share for sure. Usually, the biggest shakeups with sleds concern individual advancements or pieces of new technology that find their way onto our favorite rides. Occasionally, though, it is a new model that comes along and causes a big stir and the 1984 Yamaha Phazer could certainly be considered a shakeup.
There was actually a lot going on in the sled business in 1983 and 84. A disastrous late seventies and early eighties weather pattern left many parts of the snow belt with bare ground for a better part of a few winters. Add to that a recession and something so foreign to us today, it seems almost unbelievable if there weren’t records to prove it: consumer interest rates in the teens and up. It was enough to cause Kawasaki and John Deere to throw in the towel on their snowmobile lines and, of course, Arctic Cat’s parent company, Arctic Enterprises to go belly-up completely. On the bright side, the industry was in full transition mode to the independent front suspension and engine technology and reliability were at an all time high.
Without getting too deep into the technical details (I will leave that up to Les Pinz, at some point), the Yamaha PZ480 was like a strange creature from another planet when it landed on magazine covers and showroom floors in the late fall of 1983. I always liken seeing that first silver Phazer to the experience just a year or so later of seeing the first Ford Taurus sedan show up around town, with its angular, egg-shaped features, so different than anything else out there.
The Phazer was basically a completely new machine from the ground up. The surprisingly good performing 485 fan cooled engine wasn’t shared with anything else, at least not initially. The rear suspension was not the aggressive Pro Action Link skid found in the SR-V or the ill-fated 1981-83 SRX/Vmax chassis. And with a nod to an unlikely inspiration, the Alouette Super Brute, the Phazer sported a handlebar mounted windshield and gauge pod that actually followed the riders turns and provided surprisingly decent wind protection. Most importantly, the Phazer’s gauge and accessories placement led to one of the first discussions I have ever had regarding a new word to the snowmobile genre: ergonomics.
Due to limited production of 1984 models, the Phazer really didn’t take off until the 1985 model year. It was enough, along with Arctic Cat’s two-year hiatus, to catapult Yamaha to the top of the snowmobile business, a position they would hold until more shakeups hit the market in the form of an expanding line of Polaris Indys, most importantly, the game-changing Indy 500 in 1989.
As is so often the case, the wheels of big corporate R&D in Japan grind slowly and meticulously and the original Phazer suffered the same fate as the Exciter 570 and Vmax-4. The long awaited redo in 1990, dubbed the Phazer II was arguably what the original Phazer should have been all along, with it’s wider front-end and better suspension. Nevertheless, models like the Phazer helped to save the snowmobile industry in the mid-80s by offering a sled anyone could ride and be happy on, with a different look and different technology than what we had become accustomed to.
So, where is the next Phazer or has that time come and gone? Yamaha was unable to match the rabid excitement toward their four-stroke MX bikes with their four stroke sleds. I think Polaris took a swing at it with the Shift series, trying to offer an affordable “everyman” sled with high-priced function to lure young people back to the market. Yamaha tried to rekindle the old Phazer flame again in 2007, but it was, unfortunately, not the same.
Is it the money? I was messing around with an inflation calculator while working on this article and the $8,999 2007 Phazer price tag equates to about 4,500 bucks in 1984 money, not too far off from the original Phazer’s retail price. The question remains, aside from gadgets and component advancements, what will the next big model shakeup be in the snowmobile business?
Will there ever be a sled like an ’84 Phazer or ’89 Indy 500 again? To quote Ernest Hemmingway: “isn’t it pretty to think so?”