AmSnow.com is now SnoWest.com
In academic articles (boring stuff about hedge fund performance or nuclear fusion), there is sometimes a section titled “Recommendations for Further Research.” This story is kind of a recommendation for further research.
So my research question is, why did Honda never commercially market a real snowmobile? It’s certainly a topic that has received ample debate over the years, but, from my perspective, there has been little resolution. Admittedly, I probably came along about 10 or 20 years too late, because many of the people who would know the answers simply aren’t around anymore or long since retired. I still have this vision of a warehouse somewhere in Japan with several dozen really cool prototypes Honda put together to begin feeling-out the industry. Who would know this for sure and, if they did, would they ever admit it is the obvious hurdle.
The astute snowmobile aficionados out there are already discrediting me because Honda actually did enter the snowmobile business for about 34 seconds back in 1973. The UL175 “White Fox,” which wasn’t white and didn’t much resemble a fox, was Honda’s sole commercial contribution to the snowmobile business. They only built a few hundred of these weird looking little units and they are, of course, coveted by collectors. The White Fox basically looked like a plastic kid’s sled with a motor, track, and skis attached. Although I have never seen one in person, they look like an emergency room visit waiting to happen.
It’s not hard to figure out why Honda dabbled with the White Fox. The snowmobile business was like the siren’s song of powersports in the late ‘60s and early ’70s; seemingly everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Retailers JC Penney and Montgomery Ward got in on the act, as did all three of the other major Japanese motorcycle makers. Heck, even Harley-Davidson couldn’t resist.
Honda was and is the master of creating markets for stuff we never knew we needed. Take the All-Terrain Cycle (ATC) as an example. When this was introduced in the early 1970s, with three cartoonish “balloon tires” and the anvil-reliable 90cc Honda four stroke motor, who knew it would lead to the ATV revolution of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and today? Honda’s done this countless times in the motorcycle business too with the Gold Wing, the Ruckus scooter, and more recently the strangely style and named Grom. This sort of innovative change was clearly what Honda was trying to pull-off with the White Fox project, with much less impactful results.
Honda singlehandedly transformed the motorcycle in the early ‘60s by selling stylish, reliable, and affordable motorcycles to the public. Motorcycles, up to that point, had earned a reputation as ground zero for hooligans: leather jackets, engineer boots, cigarettes, “dames,” fist fights, etc. Living a life free from “The Man” on two wheels also meant a crash course in motorcycle repair because, believe it or not, bikes were just as unreliable as early snowmobiles. Honda changed that whole image with their “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” ad campaign, thumbing their noses at Triumph, Harley, and BSA owners with tattoos and felonies.
Honda’s direction was the vision of a man called “the Japanese Henry Ford,” young engineer Soichiro Honda. I am speculating that the reason snowmobiles never became part of the Honda Empire had a lot to do with Mr. Honda. You see, Honda was not a fan of two stroke engines and didn’t make his disdain for oil burners a secret. I remember reading somewhere that Mr. Honda called two strokes motors, and I’m paraphrasing, “dirty little beasts” or something to that effect. When competitors Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki were selling noisy, smelly, oily, peaky two-stroke bikes, Honda was turning out Super Hawks, Dreams, Scramblers, and Super Cubs with quiet and efficient four strokes that ran like wrist watches.
It’s not like Honda didn’t build two strokes, however. They dominated motocross racing on and off over two decades with their two-stroke powered CR race bikes ridden by guys like Jeff Stanton and Jeremy McGrath. They weren’t too shabby with Grand Prix road racing either, with their two-stroke NSR500 winning 10 world championships between 1984 and 1999. Not bad for a “dirty little beast.” And the White Fox was even powered by a small, single cylinder two-stroke motor. Despite the ability to build a two-stroke, Honda appeared to avoid the sled biz like the plague. Having read magazines, like AMSnow, since the mid-‘70s, I cannot remember an unsubstantiated rumor surfacing about Honda even expressing interest in snowmobiles. That was until about 10 years ago…
Honda began a campaign called “Powerhouse Dealers,” where they attempted to open stores throughout the United States retailing only Honda products. This is certainly not a new concept in the powersports industry, but Honda appeared to be the first company going all-in to pull it off. If this was to happen, however, Honda had to offer a wide enough array of products to keep dealers in all corners of the U.S. happy.
All of a sudden, along came a four-stroke Honda personal watercraft. Then, as reported in the pages of AMSnow, patent drawings surfaced depicting a four-stroke snowmobile design, reminiscent of early Yamahas with a laid-back, inline four cylinder engine that looked like it was plucked directly out of a CBR sport bike. And then it all ended. The watercraft disappeared a few years ago and nothing ever became of the snowmobile design. Honda teased the market again a few years later, intimating that they were going to come out with something totally different, but it never happened. Computer graphics people went crazy with Photoshop pasting together concepts of what this new Honda snow machine might look like, but alas it was all a dreamscape.
It’s no big secret the snowmobile business is tough. I certainly don’t blame Honda for not wanting to take the financial risk of entering a business that is primarily driven by bad weather. It’s just interesting to me, that when a hundred or so other companies were either building or marketing a sled, what did Honda not see that kept them out of the market? There’s no question they could have easily built a snowmobile. And, given Honda’s fortunes in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I have no doubt they probably could have sold a pile of them. I just wish there were something more to reminisce about than the Honda White Fox. Seriously?