Yamaha vs Can-Am vs Polaris ATV comparo

Anyone involved with ATVs knows that engines are getting bigger and that horsepower now figures prominently on every manufacturer's sales chart. If you're not in the horsepower race you're not in the race at all. It's almost reached the point where 500cc is a medium class machine. If you want to match it with the chunky boys in the big bore class you need at least 700cc, and better still 800.

Another interesting phenomenon in this category is the cross-over from work to recreation. People are buying big bore ATVs to play on, not just for slogging around the farm. Aussie quadsters are trail riding on big bores, pig hunting with them, exploring and finding adventure by the tonne, and if nothing else, that proves again what versatile machines these big ATVs are. Farmers can't do without them and now 'fun farmers' are starting to feel the same way.

As for power ratings, no manufacturer would be caught dead without a genuine big bore in the range, that's how important cubes have become. Honda increased the grunt factor with the updated 675cc Rincon, Yamaha upped the anti with the 07 Grizzly (now 686cc), Polaris has the 760cc Sportsman, but Can-Am leads this howling pack with the mighty 800cc Outlander, the biggest and most powerful production quad the rec-ute world has seen.

So being powerhounds, of course we just had to get a bunch of these tough guys together and see who was bluffing and who had a full chamber. After a quick phone around we ended up with three big bore champs: the 07 Yamaha Grizzly, the Cam-Am Outlander 650 and the Polaris Sportsman 800. Can-Am was willing to lay it on the line too. They could have demanded we opt for the big 800, given the nature of the opposition, but they considered their Outlander 650 a match for any quad out there. "Go ahead, stick our 650 up against the other guys", they said. "And if it can't keep up, we'll shout the first round". As it turned out, no-one at Can-Am had to put their hands in their pockets.

This comparison took us two days in two locations, with plenty of terrain variety thrown in to make things interesting. We worked the ridges atop the hills behind Black Duck Valley Motorcycle Park in Queensland, then hauled the ATVs to a farming property nearby to see how they performed in general duties. By the time we were done we had a good idea of how they stacked up. The important thing, and we discovered this early in the game, was that there are no dungers in the bunch. They're all classy performers, and although we found examples of how the manufacturers had reached the same destination by different roads, although the designs differed, each machine was more than capable.

ERGOS
Ride quality and comfort are prime considerations on an ATV, whether you're mustering cattle all day or beach riding with your mates. We believe these three ATVs are close in comfort and ride quality, although the faster you ride the more apparent small differences become.

We thought the Yamaha was the most agile but could definitely feel the blue bike's higher centre of gravity. When we checked the specs we could see why. The Grizzly is the lightest of the three at 274kg. But it also has the shortest wheelbase (1250mm), the tallest seat height (905mm), and is tallest overall. It makes a noticeable difference to the Yamaha's feeling of stability when you stand up, thereby lowering its centre of gravity. There's no reason not to stand either; with high bars and the highest seat, Grizzly ergos produce less knee bend when you're sitting so the sitting-to-standing transition requires less effort. The only thing we didn't like about the Yamaha's ergonomics was the large airbox cover in front of you, which makes getting your weight forward a little more difficult.

The biggest kicker for the Grizzly is its steering precision. It's the best in the bunch. And the power steering is brilliant. The engineer who came up with that idea deserves a pay raise and a week in the Hoochy-Coochy Lounge. Power steering not only makes this big girl easier to turn, and turn tighter, but reduces bumpsteer when you slam something hard like a rock or hard-edged rut. The Yamaha doesn't feel as confidence inspiring at high speed but it's ability manoeuvre effortlessly at low speed in a confined space, or when mustering unpredictable cattle, more than makes up for a slight sense of tippyness when you're riding faster.

The Polaris is the heaviest of the bunch at 349kg. It's also the longest and widest. Ride quality is excellent but its beefier dimensions reduce the Polaris' steering speed, making it more tiring to ride, and give it a tendency to understeer or 'push' in turns.

The seat felt softer than the others and has a central support bar or moulding we could feel through the padding. In gear selection this ATV is probably the most old fashioned, with a long stick-shift on the righthand side. The saving grace is that you shift in a simple straight pattern, and that pushing the shifter all the way forward engages High range, so you won't engage Low range by mistake.

The Can-Am Outlander 650 is the sports car of the bunch and we would rank it second behind the Yamaha in pure agility. The Outlander feels better the harder you ride it and there's very little to criticise in its ergonomics ( with the exception of the brake layout, which we'll get to in a minute). The gear selector was a little notchy but that can be expected on a brand new machine with zero kays on the clock. The thing we didn't like about the gear selector were 'black on black' characters denoting the various gear positions. Anyone riding this machine all the time would know where the gear positions are but when you're swapping machines all day, the black-on-black thing can make it difficult in low light to select the gear we want.

BRAKE LAYOUTS
We've mentioned this before because we believe it's a safety issue: all ATVs should have the same brake control layout. Swapping from one quad to another all day highlights the industry's inconsistency in brake lever positions, and everyone who took part in this comparison shared that opinion.

Here's what we found before we even turned a wheel. The Yamaha had a righthand brake lever controlling the front brakes, a lefthand lever controlling the rear brakes, and a rear brake foot pedal. When stationary, the Grizzly is left in the Park position; there is no brake lever park lock. The Polaris and the Can-Am have single-lever braking where a single lever on the lefthand side of the bars controls all the wheel brakes. They also have a rear brake pedal, and a park brake lock on the main brake lever.

The problem with this inconsistency is, we believe, two-fold. First, most two and four-wheeled vehicles, including all the world's motorcycles and all the manual-transmission sports ATVs, have the front brake lever on the righthand side (and a clutch lever on the opposite side). That's what riders all over the world are used to and certainly the familiar control layout in this country. To reverse it with no benefit to the rider makes no sense. You can - and we have - reached for the brake lever and found only a hand grip, and right there you have an obvious problem.

The second issue with lever layouts also concerns safety. If you find yourself in a sticky situation with a quad, unexpectedly facing a steep descent and having to reverse away from it, for example, the safest way to pull off that manoeuvre is to walk next to the quad and operate the controls from there. That's most easily ( and safely) achieved if the main brake lever, the thumb throttle and the gear selector are on the same side of the machine.

None of the quads in our comparison had that configuration (the Yamaha came closest but had the gear selector on the lefthand side) so topping our wish list for every ATV is a standardised brake control layout. We have no beef with single-lever braking, in fact it's probably the best setup for rural operators, but the lever should be on the righthand side where most riders expect to find it.

THE ENGINES
The engine configurations in this ATVs are very different although in practical terms their performance is comparable. It should be said though that these are all strong powerplants and best employed by experienced riders who know how to handle this much grunt. If you're unaccustomed to large ATVs with big engines and bags of pull, don't get a rush of blood to the head; give yourself time to get used to all the mumbo before you start slamming berms, pulling off triple-backflips and jumping freeways.

So how do these engines stack up? They're very impressive and they're all different. Each is liquid cooled and fuel injected but that's where the similarities end. The Polaris uses a parallel twin, a la Triumph Bonneville, with the pistons rising and falling together and firing alternately. The motor is called an 800 but capacity is actually 760c. The Can-AM uses a four-valve, OHC V-twin of 650cc, and the Yamaha a Raptor-based single-cylinder, four-valve, forward-inclined engine of 686cc.

 In terms of working torque you don't need much more than these engines can churn out. We had no problem getting over or through anything, and with their independent suspension and ample wheel travel these three need 4WD or low range only when the going gets sloppy or the trail is rock-strewn.

We thought the Polaris might stomp away from the other two, by virtue of its superior capacity, but that's not what happened when we chucked these three into a straight-out drag race. What did happen? The Can-Am did all the stomping, and without raising a sweat. In run after run the Outlander blitzed the field, always pulling a good two or three bike lengths on the other two. We don't really know what accounts for the Outlander 650's amazing performance but it sure as hell is fast. However, we did notice while reading the specs on these quads that the Outlander engine has the largest throttle bodies (46mm). If, as theory has it, throttle bodies control airflow and fuel delivery is controlled by the size of the injectors, the Outlander must have fist-size injector nozzles.

In the final wash-up, we thought the Polaris had the strongest bottom-end. Its soft rear suspension, and a tendency to squat under hard acceleration off the line, actually enables it to pull wheelies out of the gate. The Can-Am has the strongest midrange and top-end, while the single-cylinder Yamaha fell in between these two in both speed and acceleration. To be honest, we were surprised by the speed of the Outlander. Half way through the comparison the boys were yelling "Hey, this can't be a 650!"

When we measured fuel consumption the results were more varied than we expected. If you're the kind of bloke who kicks the pump to get the last drop of fuel out of it, take a close look at the Grizzly because this is where we'd prefer big bore fuel consumption to be. We should add here that the normal operators would probably get much better fuel consumption that the ATV crew managed during their big bore bunfight. Here's how it went:

ROUGH TERRAIN PERFORMANCE
Manufacturers put a tonne of effort into developing all-wheel drive systems and it's a wonder they can come up with such diverse designs for achieving the same thing. In basic terms, rough terrain capability is determined by chassis and suspension performance, and in this case the method by which the front wheels are engaged to produce four-wheel drive.

As well as expending a lot of effort designing rough terrain chassis, manufacturers like to invest a lot of time boasting about how good theirs is. But that's a marketing thing. If your system is the same as the bloke next door's, you can't claim superiority, but if you design your own, you can at least make the claim, even if it's splitting mechanical hairs. In truth, all these quads have very capable rough terrain chassis. What separates them is not only how well they handle rough ground but how user friendly is the interconnected machinery. It also comes to down to which you believe is superior, a manually or automatically engaged front differential.

With the Yamaha you have the equivalent of a free-wheeling or 'open' front differential. When the electrically activated diff lock is engaged it causes all the wheels to turn at the same speed. You have to engage 4WD before you push the diff lock button but you don't have to stop first, to engage or disengage the diff lock. This is a very good system, and in our opinion encourages you to kick in the diff lock before you hit difficulties, not half way into them. The steering becomes noticeably heavier when all the wheels are driving. On the other hand, the advantage of this manually locking diff is that the wheels are locked immediately, there's no delay, as there can be with an auto locking system that requires wheel slip before it shoves more torque to the front wheels.

The Polaris uses an 'on demand' all-wheel drive system. When you push the AWD button the machine will engage the diff lock is automatically and on-the-fly. In fact, the machine is not in four-wheel drive until the rear wheels start to spin, and as a response to that, the driven shaft to the front diff engages. Then you have a true locked diff. Drive to both front wheels disengages when the front wheels are turning at the same speed as the rear wheels. When traction is regained at the rear, the machine reverts to 2WD.

On the Can-Am, the Visco-Lok speed-sensing limited slip differential monitors the rotational speed of the front wheels, not the rear wheels. If the ATV is stationary with the front wheels spinning, the unit senses which is spinning faster and progressively and automatically feeds more torque to the wheel with the best traction. Acceleration, or at least a thumb on the throttle, is required to activate the Visco-Lok; if you back off the system will revert to 3WD.

There are pros and cons in these auto locking designs. Most extreme terrain experts agree that although you have to stop to engage a manually-locking diff, you know it's locked, you're not at the mercy of a robot that may or may not lock all the front wheels for you. Weird things can happen too. If you enjoy power-sliding, you can suddenly find that the machine has locked in all-wheel drive, because one of the front or rear wheels is spinning. As a result, your powerslide has died in the arse and you are now heading in an 'inappropriate direction' - or straight at that Blackbutt. If you like sliding, lock your machine in 2WD.

In its publicity material, Polaris criticises the Can-Am for requiring 3.5 turns of the front wheels before Visco-Lok engages both front wheels, and fair enough; it is, as we said, a marketing war. But the Sportsman ain't perfect either. The front wheels are said to be fully engaged when the rear wheels spin as little as one fifth of a turn, but in our experience, when you're scratching up a powdery hill they can often spin considerably more than that before front wheel drive kicks in. The result is that occasionally you can dig holes in the surface you're trying to climb before you get AWD.

What we're getting down to here is that mechanical hair-splitting. All these systems work and work well. All we can tell you is that during rugged test session with these machines there was no reason to doubt their rough terrain capability. There's no way you can claim "this machine will go up there but that one won't". With experienced riders, they all 'get up there'.

THE FINAL WORD
The tough part in buying a big bore quad is choosing the model that suits you. The model range is growing all the time, and gradually new technologies are being introduced to expand the ATV's already impressive versatility.

If we were looking for a fast, comfortable, powerful workhorse that could carry plenty of equipment and had all the accessories we needed, we'd be going for the Polaris Sportsman. It's the ute of the group. It not only looks the business with fat Carlisle PXT tyres and stylish alloy rims, it has a huge range of aftermarket accessories to extend its versatility and give you plenty of options. None of the other manufacturers comes close to Polaris' Lock & Ride integrated storage box system and that could be the tipping point for a lot of hard to please customers.

The Yamaha Grizzly has a lot going for it. In our opinion it's the most agile of the three, and the easiest to turn, thanks to that brilliant electric power steering. It would be a great machine for anyone who spends a lot of time in the saddle and has to manoeuvre all day around work yards, sheds or tight scrub. As personal transport it's difficult to beat. The Yamaha has enough power for most rural operators but not quite enough for the more sports minded rider who likes to throw it around a bit and dare his mates to keep up. It's rough terrain capability is excellent though, far better than it's stablemate the 660. In redefining the big Grizzly, Yamaha has produced a big bore blaster with very few shortcomings.

As far as we're concerned, Can-Am's 650 Outlander was the sleeper of the bunch. Can-Am is only just getting a foothold in the Australian market but if they keep building ATVs like this their foothold will turn into a stranglehold. There's very little we could find to criticise on this machine. It's easily the fastest of the three, despite giving away a big chunk of cubic capacity to the Polaris, and it's all-wheel drive system is smooth and unobtrusive. It steers with surprising lightness, even when all the wheels are driving, and responds with more enthusiasm than the other two when you ride it hard. If you're looking for a rec-ute machine that works like a tractor during the week so it can stick it to the big guys on the weekend, and come away smirking, you'd be mad not to check out the Outlander 650, or better still ride one, before buying anything else.