Flashback to September 2014.
Inside the Arctic Cat styling shop in Thief River Falls, where Nathan Blomker and Corey Friesen worked their design and styling magic on what would eventually become the 2018 Next Gen bodywork.
On this day, Blomker, who is the Senior Industrial Designer, talked about the some of the requirements of the soon-to-come plastic, including increased airflow and improved/easy access to the side panels and hood of the Next Gen bodywork. Compare these images to the production version, and you can see some differences, which is part of the design process.
He also talked about how the LED headlight would not only provide much-enhanced visibility at night, but also deliver a cool styling effect.
Friesen (above), who is the Senior Stylist, talked about the surfaces on which he would perform his artful creativity to apply graphic color and shape.
Two and a half years later, we have the 2018 model line of Arctic Cat snowmobiles, in which many of the models come equipped with these two new features.
Progression is happening all the time at Arctic Cat. I wonder what these two are working on today?
Looks sharp.
I look forward to getting my hands on my 2018 ZR 8000 RR 137.
It’s going to be a long summer
New bodywork looks great and I’m sure everyone will appreciate the easier access. Does anyone know why the new style wasn’t applied to the 7000 series?
If they would choose any paint color than the primer gray that some of these models come in they would look 100% better in my opinion. At least in the photos it looks like primer gray, in person I hope that they look better.
Please put black over the primer color on the 18`s. To me it makes them look cheap.
Look at all the Yamaha engineers around there…oh wait….there aren’t any.
Mike…very well put. Yamaha takes too much credit for all of the work our boys at Cat have done. Cat had a lot of time and effort in the 998 as well, however, gets no credit for it. Yamaha is certainly taking credit for most of the hard work of Cat……including the new ZR200…Snoscoot deal. Mostly done in TRF.
Not only has Yamaha taken a lot of credit for all the hard work that The boys at Cat have done for the development of a snowmobile. So have the other two manufacturers. Don’t know if the Rev. would’ve had as big of an impact on the snowmobile industry if it would’ve stuck with The Trailing Arm front suspension, or the Boogie wheel rear suspension. Or even if it would’ve kept the gas tank on front of the engine.
@SNOWOWL, I heard from a bird there was interference between the intake/cooling system and the new plastics on the 7000 series.
The hood on the 7000 has the vent on the top due to the location of the radiator. Maybe because of the new 998 engine and the different cooling system being used, just possible that next year that they go with the NA version of the 998 Turbo as a replacement? The 7000 while a nice engine is getting a little long in the tooth.
The 1 Yamaha engineer wasn’t allowed in the photo shoot