Whenever someone visits the Sweeten Snowmobile Museum in Lindon, UT, they always ask the same two questions: “Do all of these run?” and “How many snowmobile manufacturers were there?”
Normally I respond to the second question, “more than 200” to which they invariably ask, “what happened to them all?”
I explain that the oil embargo of the early 1970s, combined with several poor winters, bankrupted most of the manufacturers or caused the parent companies to discontinue their snowmobile lines.
That repeated question got me interested in researching what the number of brands actually was and how many were still producing each year. Wanting to keep my data relevant I included only manufacturers that sold machines in the U.S. and Canada and considered “snowmobiles” to be a powered sled that is track driven and ski steered.
I did not include kits that could be added to a motorcycle or ATV or tracked vehicles without skis.
The results are as follows. The total number of manufacturers was 211, the most that ever produced in a single year was 102 and that was in 1971. Below is a list of the number of manufacturers producing during a given year. The trend is obvious as more than 200 manufacturers dropped to four, the number we have today. The machines now produced from those four companies are a vast improvement from the rudimentary sleds sold during the snowmobile craze half a decade ago.
1924-1946 1
1947-1948 2
1949 3
1950-1951 6
1952-1953 5
1954 7
1955 5
1956-1958 8
1959 12
1960 14
1961 13
1962 16
1963-1964 20
1965 29
1966 34
1967 47
1968 61
1969 74
1970 97
1971 102
1972 91
1973 59
1974 49
1975 36
1976 26
1977 18
1978 11
1979 11
1980-1981 10
1982 9
1983 7
1984 8
1985 6
1986 5
1987-1995 4
1996-1997 5
1998 6
1999 7
2000-2002 9
2003-2004 8
2005 7
2006-2007 8
2008 9
2009-2010 7
2011-2014 6
2015 5
2016-2019 4
(ED—Sweeten is the owner of the Sweeten Snowmobile Museum in Lindon, UT.)