Ski-Doo’s 1980 lineup of high performance Blizzard leaf spring sleds looked sharp and were certainly fast enough with liquid cooled, rotary valved, twin carbed Rotax powerplants. A trio of Blizzards covered the displacement spectrum of 340 and 440 liquid and 500cc fan cooled sizes, called the 7500 Plus, 9500 Plus, and 5500 respectively.
The fan-cooled 5500 was infamously updated in 1981 with Bombardier’s first IFS consumer model, the Blizzard 5500 MX. The correctly named trailing-arm front end provided about four inches of travel paired to the industry-leading 10 inches of rear movement.
Good trail sleds they were, but great race sleds they were not. Even the cross-country racing legend Gerald Karpik was known to prefer to race the older late-70s vintage “RV” based sleds for battling it out in the Midwest ditches. The leaf spring and the smooth riding, but heavy handling MX variants were just not competitive against the Indy trailing-arm and SRV telescopic strut suspensions of the day. In response, over the summer of ‘81 Karpik and his team built a pair of racers based on stock Blizzard motors, drivetrains and 5500 MX tunnels, but with an improved trailing-arm front suspension and front chassis. These were often called the “Karpik Specials” and were very successful, winning major “snowcross” races at Alexandria, the SOO I-500 and others during the ‘81-82 season.
■ Racing sled for home
As the consumer Blizzards were improved with the 440cc 9500 being replaced with the 521cc 9700 for 1983-84, more was cooking up in Ski-Doo’s race department. Snowmobilers, racers and press folks were all anticipating a “next generation” machine from the team in Valcourt. A preview was on the way in the fall of 1983 when Bombardier released a new 56 hp class racer, the Ski-Doo Formula M/X Pro Stock.