1973 Polaris Colt: Economical, Quick and Fun

Sometimes the sleds that are the most fun to ride are the light weight little ones that can get out of the hole quickly and be tossed around at will. A fine example is the appropriately named Polaris Colt.

Developed in the mid-1960s as a smaller, lighter and less-costly alternative to the big Polaris Mustang family sled, the Colt quickly established a performance reputation when Herb Howe won the inaugural Winnipeg-to-St. Paul I-500 cross country race with an example of the first production Colt in 1966.

By the early 1970s, snowmobiles were changing fast, with tunnel-mounted engines, diaphragm pumper carbs, band and drum brakes and bogie wheel suspensions all on the way out of production – even if many manufacturers hadn’t quite figured that out yet.

But Polaris definitely had the pulse of the increasingly performance-oriented snowmobile market. The company redesigned its 1973 Colt series to resemble its successful 1972 TX race sleds, and it equipped these Colts much like the race sleds, too.

That made them the absolute performance leaders of the important under-a-thousand-dollar class of snow machines.

The Boy Racer

The 1973 Colt was styled like the 1972 TX Starfire racers, with their black grille on the front of a fully-enclosed hood that helped meet the new sound-deadening regulations. And, like the race sleds, the seat color was also changed to black from the red previously used on Colt seats.

Fan-cooled engine choices included 175 and 250 singles and a 295 twin. The sportier but more expensive Colt S/S models offered 295 and 340 free air twins. But the 250 single was the heart of the Colt line-up, and its output was increased by 4 horsepower for 1973 thanks to more aggressive port timing and use of a Donaldson tuned muffler in place of the previous Polaris-engineered silencing device.

Standard equipment included industry-leading Polaris Torque-O-Matic clutches with revised faces for better belt contact through the shift range, a hydraulic disc brake and slide rail track suspension. Common on race sleds, most of these features were simply not available on competitive trail models at anywhere near the affordable price of the Colt, if they were even available at all.

These features helped make the light weight 250 Colt a really good runner, at least off the starting line.

Testing by Invitation To Snowmobiling magazine found that a 250 Colt tied two very respectable 440s – an Alouette Sno-Brute and a Moto-Ski F – in a 100-yard drag race. The magazine further said, “In fact, it beats a number of 440cc snowmobiles in 100-yard acceleration,” but it didn’t embarrass the manufacturers of those also-rans by naming them.

Invitation also determined that the Colt had very good stability to resist tipping over sideways.

“At 43-degrees, it was in the top three of all 21 snowmobiles we put to the tilt test this year,” the magazine reported, noting that this was quite a feat considering it had a 15-inch wide track which wasn’t as naturally stable as the 17- and 18-inch tracks on many larger sleds.

The magazine testers also pointed out that the Colt’s low forward-mounted engine and low overall profile enabled a very-low-for-the-day center-of-gravity of just 15.5-inches.This contributed greatly to the little performer’s excellent stability, allowing riders to toss the sled around very easily without fear of rolling over or crashing.

However, the magazine did say that the ride quality and comfort let them down, specifically complaining about the “enormous” steel gas tank directly in front of the rider, calling it “a knee bruiser of the first rank.”

Still, Jim Jarvis, a dealer and racer for a competitive brand, as well as the Invitation To Snowmobiling technical guru and a test rider, described his feelings.

“I still say that of all the snowmobiles we have ridden, the ones that were the most fun, the ones I liked the best, were the little ones – the (250) Colt,” and one directly competing model, Jarvis wrote at the time.

The magazine concluded that “With the exception of the TX series, we think the Colts are the best machines in the Polaris line. And whereas TXs are very expensive and hard to come by, the prolific Colts start at $800.”

Actually, the kid-friendly Colt 175 listed at just $650.

At that time, most manufacturers were having trouble selling all the sleds that they were building, and the industry’s unsold inventory rose to a record 315,000 units for the 1973 model year. Not surprisingly, Polaris had serious carry-over on all of its 1973 Colt and Colt S/S models except for the well-received 250, which essentially sold out.

And the Colt 250s kept on running, too. Many were still operating years and even decades later, making them a winner in just about every way possible.

If you keep an eye out for them, you still might see an early 70s Colt 250 out on the back trails or in the farm fields to this very day. They’re still fun, spunky little sleds that are fun to goof around on.

SPECS: 1973 Polaris Colt 250

Manufacturer: Polaris Industries, a division of Textron Inc., at Roseau, Minnesota 

POWERTRAIN

Engine: 244cc Polaris Star / Fuji Heavy Industries EC25P piston-port radial-fan-cooled single with one Mikuni VM-30 slide valve carb, magneto & breaker point ignition, single pipe into Donaldson tuned muffler

Compression ratio: 7.6 to 1

Lubrication: Pre-mix at 40 to 1

Power output: 20 HP @ 6,000 RPM

Electrical output: 75 Watts

Clutches: Polaris Torque-O-Matic flyweight drive and torque

sensing driven

Chassis

Type: Spot welded and painted steel with chromed tube steel front bumper and removable fiberglass hood

Claimed dry weight: 300 pounds

Front suspension: Triple leaf springs

Ski stance: 25 inches

Rear suspension: Polaris Equiliberator stamped steel slide rails with torsion springs and one hydraulic shock absorber on rear arm

Track: 15-inch-wide molded rubber with steel cleats and dual sprocket drive (42-inch ground contact)

Brake: Hydraulic disc

Fuel capacity: 5 gallons

Standard equipment: Kill switch, passenger grab strap, storage box behind windshield in top of hood, dual tail lights, snow flap

Options: Speedometer/odometer, tachometer, rear bumper

MSRP: $840