Friday, January 20, 2012

Taiwnese ATV


On of the ATVs that I own is an Arctic Cat 366.  I purchased it used this past fall, and it is now a few years old.  It has been an OK machine, it mostly gets used for running errands around town.  It is has independent suspension in the front and rear, a CVT (belt) type drive train with high low and reverse gear.  It is powered with a basic air cooled engine with a carburetor.  Overall I would rate it's performance high.  The only negatives with this machine are it's small size and the lack of EFI (fuel injection).



Recently I was reading an article in an ATV magazine about some of the new Taiwanese and Chinese machines that are starting to be sold in the US.  In on of the photos I notice that the machine offered by Kymeco looked very similar to my machine.  I looked underneath my machine and found this label on the frame.  It turns out that my machine was not made by Arctic Cat in Thief River Falls Minnesota, but was actually produced by Kwang Yang Motors in Taiwan (that is the parent company for Kymeco).

I knew that Arctic Cat has sourced engines from Suzuki for years (and Polaris has used engines from Fuji), but I was surprised to see that they sourced the whole vehicle from overseas.  It looks to me like the smaller basic machines offered by Arctic Cat come from Kymeco, but the larger machines in their line up are produced here.  I wonder how many of the other big manufacturers are getting machines from China?

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