Snowmobile Design Concept
by Nick for Snowmobile Style
Snowmobile designs and concepts often look great but most have some aspect or feature that makes it unlikely that they will see the light of day on a production line. Snowmobile design is an artform and it’s the passion of talented artists and engineers who push the design limits that ultimately bring us new models and features. As an example take a look at this excellent snowmobile design concept by Matus Prochaczka. It sports a face-like profile with a grin, piercing eyes and tracks instead of skis. I have no doubt that if it could be manufactured with a competitive price that it would sell extremely well. New designs pose new challenges and this concept snowmobile has several of them.
This snowmobile concept has twin tracks up front which poses a challenge to steering. Having the entire front track system pivot like normal ski’s isn’t realistic because of the “too many moving parts” rule. In general it’s best to keep the number of moving parts in close proximity to each other to a minimum. Steering would then be achieved by having the tracks operate at different speeds independent of each other. The snowmobile would then turn in the direction of the track rotating more slowly. A simple brake system might be the most effective way of accomplishing that. Another potential concern is the wide rear ski, under certain conditions it might become frozen to the ground. Friction caused by normal riding creates heat and coming to a stop over an icy surface might trigger a quick melting and re-freezing of a thin layer of that ice causing the sled to become stuck.
Matus is from Bratislava, Slovakia and has won several awards for his talented designs and concepts. Having completed studies at the Slovak Technical University of Architecture in Design Matus specializes in Rhinoceros, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, AutoCad, Corell draw, sketching and photorealistic pictures. Matus is currently active on Coroflot and you can contact him here if his concept skills interest you. If Matus keeps up the great work it’s possible we’ll eventually see some of his ideas in the Polaris Snowmobiles For Sale section of the site, wouldn’t that be awesome ?! Excellent work Matus !!
