Easier to ride, easier to control, easier to turn, easier to see, easier to bring all your stuff
In my mind, I got the easiest article assignment of “What’s the most significant snowmobile from Polaris for 2015”. While the Indy Adventure and Voyager model line expansion into a 155” class will certainly have many new fans and sales, the AXYS sleds are easily the really big story for 2015.
Whenever the snowmobile industry makes a bold commitment to a paradigm shifting engineering advancement, snowmobilers everywhere are the huge winners. I had my first introduction to all that is AXYS and the opportunity to put real world miles on the 2015 AXYS chassis’ in the trails of Utah this past January, follow by additional time on this next generation Polaris in Montana in early March. During each of these encounters, the AXYS provided a noticeable advancement in every area of performance and not just by a little. Superior bump absorption, predictable turning stability, comfortable rider input balance, incredible night time visibility and pure point to point performance, it was a snowmobiling blast. This snowmobile is a major leap from the “totally” repectable Polaris ProR RUSH and Switchback chassis’ that I have high mileaged over the past 2 seasons.
I do however temper my total commitment to a whole hearted proclamation of new sled superiority and here is why. We have seen in the past that new sleds presented to the media are often massaged, calibrated, tuned and maybe even tricked out to a notch (or maybe 2 notches) above what is delivered to customers in full production form. The introduction of the R-motion comes to mind, as our early experiences and enthusiastic celebrations did not directly translate to 1st or even 2nd year production performance. With that disclaimer, I would still have no hesitation in plunking down my personal sno-mo coin and loading one of these babies into my trailer with a huge smile on my face. The sled was that good! Polaris could miss by a little and from what I experienced, still have an out of the park homerun.
So far I’ve only touched on the chassis performance component of the AXYS being what makes this snowmobile big news. Add in the smooth increased pull, response and efficiency of the new 800HO power plant and the AXYS quickly moves into a new era of engineered performance as well as everywhere you point it.
It’s simple really, when you significantly improve suspension geometry and calibration, balance and lighten the vehicle weight and increase power you get a winner every time. For complete details on everything AXYS, see our article Polaris MY 2015 (Part 1)
The 2015 AXYS sleds from Polaris are a really big deal. Which one, you ask? Rush, Switchback, ProS, ProX, Adventure, 800HO, 600? That decision my friends, should be up to you!
Here’s another big deal. For 2015 SledMagazine.com will put the 60th Anniversary edition of the Polaris 800 AXYS Switchback ProS through the long term paces of the Northeastern US and Canada riding experience. We invite you to follow our trial and experiences all winter long. Without any doubt we will answer the question of “how will the full production units compare to what we had the extreme pleasure of experiencing last Winter?”
