[Tim Hancock]

I have a 4 x 4 ATV and it is fun to play around with in 6" of snow in the yard, but it will not work out well if riding in areas with drifting or deep heavy snow.

New sleds are awesome, but sleds from the 90's and even some from the late 80's are still "fun" to trail ride with. (Especially if you are not presently a hard core snowmobile owner) I have owned old snowmobiles since the late 70's because I could never justify buying new just to ride a few hours each year when we got decent snow.

That said... a friend owned a Polaris dealership in northern Michigan until a few years ago and when we visited him up there, we would always use his new sleds. As we both had ridden together all our lives and had raced MX together for many years, we rode like complete idiots and would always smoke anyone who dared to attempt to hang with us even though we were often on smaller displacement sleds he used for rentals. For trail riding, a big heavy 800cc machine that can do well over 100 mph in a straight line will not have any advantage over a smaller, lighter and easier to toss around sled.

If money is no issue, by all means buy the latest/greatest they are awesome, but I guarantee you would still have plenty of fun on 500cc machines from the 1990's for a grand or two each.