Polaris Industries Inc. is headquartered just outside of Minneapolis in Medina, Minnesota. Polaris engineering, US manufacturing and distribution facilities are located in Roseau, Minnesota; Osceola, Wisconsin; Spirit Lake, Iowa; Vermillion South Dakota.
1- Polaris was founded in Roseau, Minn., in 1954 as a snowmobile manufacturer.
2- Polaris expanded to a line of watercrafts discontinued about 10 years ago.
3- The current Iowa Spirit Lake plant was created in 1994 from an abandoned ice machine factory. After last year’s expansion and a 7.7 million investment, it is now a 400,000 sq. ft facility housing 3 brand production lines: Victory motorcycles, Indian and Slingshot.
4- The close-by Milford plant (a former Stylecraft Furniture facility) is manufacturing the GEM electric cars and Ranger, Ace vehicles, along with private-labeled products for Bobcat and Ariens utility equipment, the Brammo lines (motorcycle designs Enertia and Empulse that the company acquired last January) These 2 Brammo lines will ultimately be produced in Spirit Lake with the other Polaris motorcycles.
5- In 2011 Polaris started a plant in Monterrey, Mexico producing and distributing to Latin America the utility and recreational Ranger and RZR Sport vehicles. 6- Polaris opened in 2014 a plant in Opole, Poland manufacturing off-road vehicles for the European market.
7- Polaris is going to open in 2016 a new factory in Huntsville, Alabama concentrating on off-road vehicles.
Way to go Polaris. Nice to have a choice of US brands. I’m sure HD is paying attention now. After 50 years of dealing with HD arrogance I’m buying a Scout. ”Z
Yes, I knew that. TJ, would you care to tell us how none of this matters? Lol.
I’ve noticed that a lot of patch holders have switched to Victory. A trend? A message?
Good bikes to put a ton of miles on
Rodent: Just like the ad said. “Ride one and you will own one”. The thing is they beat themselves with the new Indian line. Ride one and you will be torn between 3 great American choices. In our busy lives; having a low maintenance and highly reliable ride is a real plus.
There’s no denying HD is an excellent brand with lots of rich history and loyal riders. The Victory line has carved a niche for people with a bit different tastes and the need for more power. Indian stayed true to its heritage in lines and form plus greatly increased the function factor.
We are lucky to have all these choices these days. Looks like a lot more choices are coming too!
Buying a stock. Prefers PII to HOG for the next 5 years.
Good info.
I am a bit surprised that nothing has been said about the ownership.
Isn’t the parent company BRP (Bombardier Polaris Rotax)? Bombardier, if my memory serves me for a change, is a Canadian outfit, Rotax is Austrian, and Polaris, is, of course, American.
BRP is a competitor and has zero financial stake in Polaris.
BRP stands for Bombardier Recreational Products.
Polaris has nothing to do with BRP – they compete for similar product market share.
A quick look at Polaris annual report shows they are making more money off the sales of their wearables than their three cycle lines at this point. But I am sure in the future things may change. They have a multi legged approach of doing business including entering into the Electric Motorcycle Wars!
Exciting times for everyone concerned.
It is interedting
It’s interesting to see the R&D Polaris is doing. Looking forward to see how much horsepower they can get from the Scout engine in a Victory frame for Pikes Peak.
Those riding Victory tells much about the bikes, entire Ness clan rides them to Sturgis, Sonny now rides one, fast, comfortable road bikes
Yep I knew it ! And Boomer & zipper have right about on the $$$$
Competition make EVERYBODY better !!!
H-D would have never (or very much later) have come out with “Rushmore”
if it hadn’t been doe Indian breathing down its neck .
H-D can deal with/ no worry about Victory alone
but you combine that with Indian & you have a 2 pronged attack on your market share.
I see more people on Victory & Indian, in this neck of the woods than I have ever seen before
& more are joining them everyday. & yes, they finally have an Indian dealer within 30 miles from my house when I had to travel 300 miles to test drive one just 2 years ago.
I’m pretty happy when I have choices to make & i will be making one soon enough
Maybe Robert can weigh in here ????
I loved the Scout so much on my test ride that I started the website (which I own, not Polaris or Indian) and invested 4 months of my life riding and reviewing the Scout in depth. I love that motorcycle so much, for many, many reasons.
I wish I had been smart enough to buy Polaris stock a couple years ago. Smart moves by them have really increased the value of their stock. I keep watching, waiting for it to go down, and it doesn’t.
Thanks to the huge sales successes they’ve had with Indian, Polaris was also able to not only keep it’s engine plant open in Osceola, Wisconsin, (prior to Indian, it had been slated for closure) but was also actually able to expand it, adding more than 60 new jobs to the 200 that had already been employed there.
The BRP comment from an earlier poster made me chuckle. The misinformation or disinformation out there being spread, apparently by some of the MoCo faithful, is literally legion.
“Their engines are made by S&S!”
(Uh….no. Not since 2003.)
“It’s not American, it’s CANADIAN!”
(Minnesota IS pretty far north, and really cold and snowy, but, no, it’s south of the border…)
“That 111 is just a disguised X-wedge!”
(Nope. It looks similar…but Polaris dropped $110 million on building it from a clean sheet of paper.)
As Blackmax noted, the HD guys should actually be grateful…competition makes everyone better.
HD is going to have to step up it’s game to stay competitive.
Looking forward to the next few years, seeing what new models Indian comes out with.
Interesting times.
Polaris domination! HD is and has been antiquated for a long time and is being put out to pasture except by those die hard headed skynyrd fans.
S&S never built Victory engines and Osceola’s engine manufacturing was scheduled to be moved to Spirit Lake, not closed. With the purchase of Indian they decided to build more motorcycles in SL and kept the engines in Osceola.