Snowmobiles
Before the start of the company's development of track vehicles, Joseph-Armand Bombardier experimented with propeller driven snow vehicles (similar to Russian aerosans). His work with snowplane designs can be traced to before 1920. He quickly abandoned his efforts to develop a snowplane and turned his inventive skills to tracked vehicles.
From the start the company made truck-sized half-track vehicles, with skis in the front and Caterpillar tracks in the rear, designed for the worst winter conditions of the flatland Canadian countryside. After producing half-tracks in World War II for the Canadian Army the company experimented with new forms of track systems and developed an all-tracked heavy duty vehicle designed for logging and mining operations in extreme wilderness conditions, such as heavy snow or semi-liquid muskeg. They produced it under the name Muskeg tractor.
Each track is composed of 2 or more rubber belts that are joined into a loop. The loops are held together with interior wheel guides and exterior cleats, commonly called grousers. The tracks are driven by a large drive sprocket that engages the grousers in sequence and causes the track to rotate. 2 belt tracks were common on early model Bombardiers as well as for muskeg machines. For deep snow use, wider tracks, employing additional belts, are used for added flotation over the snow.
The research for the track base made it possible to produce a relatively small continuous rubber track for the light one or two person snowmobile the founder of the company had dreamed about during his teen years. This led to the invention of snowmobiles as we know them.
The company created the snowmobile market, and held its own after international competitors entered the market in the late 1960s. From the 1940s through the early 1970s Bombardier built the most successful snowcat models ever produced by any snowcat manufacturer. The B12 seated 12 people, and the C18 seated 18. Both were similar in design with long tracks in the rear and skis used to steer the vehicle. The B12 and C18 were very fast for their day, with speeds over the snow exceeding 30 miles per hour. Most historic and most modern snowcats have a top speed of barely 20 mph. The Bombardier B12 and C18 were probably the precursors to the more modern Snow coach currently used by resorts for transporting tourists. In their day, the B12 and C18 vehicles were used as school buses, for mail delivery and as emergency vehicles in northern United States and Canada and were best suited to flat land conditions, frozen roadways or frozen lakes. While more than 3,000 of the Bombardier B12/C18 variants were produced, there was plenty of competition for Bombardier to contend with in both the North American and world markets. Most of the Bombardier production stayed in North American and it was the most popular series of snowcats ever produced, but it was clearly a niche product. The front ski design was incapable of being used in deep snow and rough ground conditions and this opened the door for the development of dual track and quad track snowcats. Unfortunately the front ski design was not easily adapted to change for other ground conditions, so while it was successful on flat lands, frozen lakes and snow covered roads, it could not compete on rough off road conditions. The combination of the lack of design flexibility, incompatibility with off road conditions, and the advent of modern snowplowing practices of public roadways beginning in the 1950s, and becoming common in remote areas by the 1960s probably led to the demise of the B12/C18 design.
Notable competitors included the Aktiv Snow Trac ST4 from Sweden, Thiokol, and Tucker Sno-Cat from the USA. The Snow Trac was produced, virtually unchanged until 1981 but it was very successful with over 2,000 units sold and it was used all over the globe for exploration and commercial purposes as well as the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. Tucker Sno-Cat grew to become one of the world's largest builders of these vehicles and currently produces a wide range of large commercial and exploration vehicles from its location in Medford, Oregon, USA. Thiokol produced many popular units, notably the Imp, Super Imp and Spryte models but changed ownership and name several times before going out of business in 2000 as the Logan Machine Company and manufacturer of the LMC brand.
Read more about this topic: Bombardier Recreational Products