Here’s a twist flying in the face of the commonly accepted belief 2-strokes are not environmentally clean. BRP, makers of Bombardier ATVs, Ski-Doo snowmobiles, Sea-Doo watercraft and Johnson and Evinrude outboard engines have been awarded the Clean Air Excellence Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this past April.

No, BRP didn’t receive the award for 4-stroke technology but for its Evinrude E-Tec 2-stroke outboard motors. The E-Tec Direct Injection system received the EPA’s coveted endorsement as a result of the system’s ability to achieve carbon monoxide emissions 30 to 50 times lower than a similar 4-stroke outboard. At idle, emissions can be as much as 100 times lower.

Could this signal the return of 2-stroke ATVs? Stay tuned.

So how much power is too much power for an ATV? We can imagine this question is being thrown around in boardrooms, safety agencies and law enforcement offices throughout North America.

There’s now a formidable fleet of Sport Utility ATVs, some producing (almost unbelievably) more power than the highest performance Pure Sport models. Each of the Big Bore ATVs is fully capable of running well past 65 MPH and a few of them can exceed 70 MPH.

Is this too much power? In our opinion, no. These are among the best suspended, most powerful braking and best handling off-road conveyances we’ve ever sampled. This reason – suspension and handling capability in lock-step with power and speed – is why we do not fear these faster more powerful Sport Utes.

Know this: an inexperienced, helmetless, underage rider on an ATV with half this power is in far more danger than any of these vehicles ridden to their full capability by a responsible, properly attired, experienced ATV rider.

ATV mounted search and rescue initiatives are popping up all over North America.

A well organized group from Ontario, Canada is training and empowering ATVers to perform search and rescue work in both urban and rural environments (more this issue).

The Ontario ATV Search and Rescue Federation can be reached at www.oatvsarf.org or by keying “ATV Search and Rescue” into your search engine.

We’ve already heard questions spinning off the Kawasaki/Suzuki break up regarding Arctic Cat and whether this will affect Cat’s ability to do business with both Suzuki and Kawasaki.

Here’s our take. Suzuki owns almost one third of Arctic Cat. Therefore don’t look for any changes beyond Arctic Cat’s own moves in building domestic ATV engines for more models.

Knowing all this, we suspect Arctic Cat will continue to ramp up its domestic engine capabilities at its all-new engine plant in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

Remember the joint marketing/development agreement we told you about between Suzuki and Kawasaki? This arrangement led to the “greening” of the Suzuki Quadsport Z400 and the Quad Racer 80.

It also produced the “yellowing” of the Kawasaki Prairie/KVF 700. Okay, here’s the deal. It’s all off as of right now. No more Kawasaki KFX 400’s or KFX 80’s and although we haven’t seen an official release, we suspect the Suzuki badged KVF 700 (called the Twin Peaks by Suzuki and the Prairie by Kawasaki) will cease to exist as well.

Seems the two companies decided to do it on their own (again) from this point on and from what we’ve heard, many dealers are happy.

Canada’s premiere ATV race, the 12 Hour Endurance Race of La Tuque, Quebec recently took place May 21st and 22nd.

An enthusiastic gate showed up in the rain to cheer on their teams and witness some outstanding quad racing. When the four heat, twelve hour race over two days was all said and done – team “TM Quad Yamaha” prevailed as the new 2005 champs.

2004 winners, “Splash n Dirt Yamaha” came close but were forced to wear the bridesmaid’s dresses this year. TM Quad Yamaha had a rough time in the 2004 race with injuries and mechanical problems but everything seemed to be in synch for them this year, racing their YFZ 450 to victory.