VS. 
VS.
The battle between the 2-stroke and the 4-stroke engines is relatively new to the snowmachine industry. The first ever 4-stroke snowmachines were introduced only two years ago. They were heavy, had absolutely no power and looked like they were quickly thrown together with off the shelf parts to keep environmental groups happy. This approach to building 4-stroke snowmachines was heavily criticized and met with extremely low sales figures. People, like myself, quickly got the impression that a high performance 4-stroke snowmachine was not a possibility in the near future.
The good thing is that I was wrong in my prediction because Yamaha® has introduced a revolutionary, high performance, 4-stroke snowmachine for 2003. It is the RX-1 and it is the most anticipated and talked about snowmachine of the year.
It's completely new, designed from the ground up to be the most competitive sled on the market and to change the public perception of 4-stroke snowmachines.
One of the few snowmachines that has a chance of keeping up with this monster is the Arctic Cat® Thundercat 1000 2-stroke. It is the only sled on the market with the same engine displacement as the new RX-1, so I thought it would make a good comparison.
The rest of this page will examine the specifications of each snowmachine to give a ballpark comparison of the two.
To proceed click the company logos at the top of the page for the specifications and pictures of each snowmachine.