Unless they drop prices or the economy takes a huge upward turn, I really doubt sales will be much more than they were this past year.
Think about the price the way a lot of people do, monthly payment. $100/month is do-able for a lot more people than $150/month. Since most ATV/Snowmobiles have a max of a 5 year loan term, a $10,000 sled with ZERO interest is $167/month. That puts it out of reach of a lot of people. Those people end up buying used sleds.
Add the fact that snowmobiles have become much more of a personal item, meaning that while there are plenty of 2-up sleds on the market, most people want to ride by themselves to be able to do the *performance* stuff. 2 brand new sleds are $20,000, on a trailer they get up to $24,000. That is a lot of money for something you can only ride for 2-3 months out of the year.
I'd love to say something more positive about sales, but I see used prices going up as used sleds become harder to find because people are just hanging onto them and not buying new.
Here's an interesting stat. Last year between April 1st and 15th there were 127 sleds on craiglist for a certain town. This year in the same time period there were just 49. That tells me that people are hanging onto their machines.
