Conceptual Snowmobile: Trail Ready, Seats Four

This snowmobile carries a family of four, fits on existing snowmobile trails, and packs a 165-horsepower engine.

Take a Ski-Doo ELITE, expand the body, and add two more seats. Ashish Thulkar’s concept design, The Whitefox, does just that.

Thulkar wants the whole family to enjoy winter travel and idealized one sled to do the job. Seems there could be a market for this concept to come to life.

This snowmobile differs from the common high-performance single or double snowmobiles with a roll cage and step-in seating. It kind of marries a 4-seater ATV like the Polaris RZR with a snow machine.

Which begs the question, why hasn’t Polaris or another brand already gone ahead and made one of these?

It undoubtedly would require some engineering adjustments to design a safe and comfortable ride. It also seems it would need a good compacted surface, and wouldn’t be easily managed in deep snow. Moving people out on the running boards would also be tricky for off-camber terrain, so it would likely be limited to pretty well established trails.

This is only a visual concept, with suggestions towards its specific build. But it seems like there would be plenty of places to use this kind of machine on groomed trails.

Whitefox Conceptual Manufacturing

The snowmobile would be equipped with a 165-horsepower Rotax 850 E-TEC, two-stroke engine and a plastic body. It draws visual and design foundations from the two-seated Ski-Doo ELITE.

Previously, the two-seater used a 140-horsepower, four-stroke engine and fiberglass body. Both of these changes would lower the weight to below 900 lbs.

Due to its conceptual design, it’s hard to say if this vehicle could handle well on trails. Time will tell if this concept turns into reality.