For owners of Ski-Doo snowmobiles, the letters XPS has long been affiliated with the oil most of them use in their E-TEC and 4-TEC engines. Going forward, though, you’re going to be seeing those letters in a lot more places and on a lot more jugs, cans and bottles.
Ski-Doo owner Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) recently announced a portfolio of XPS products, including 20 new lubricants and 21 new “care” products that are aimed all all types of powersports and marine vehicles — and all brands.
Many of the oils will look familiar to owners of Ski-Doos, Sea-Doos, Evinrude outboards, Can-Am bikes and four-wheelers and other Rotax-powered vehicles — with various synthetic and synthetic blend combinations.
New, though, are degreasers, lubricants, hull cleaners, waxes, vinyl protectants, road grime sprays, aluminum cleaners, plastic and rubber storers, spray waxes, foaming washes, bug cleaners, multi-surface glass cleaners and more. And the mission is to not just provide more products for their installed base of customers but to have owners of other brands of powersports or marine equipment turn to XPS products.
“This provides customers with a one-stop-shop for powersports-specific lubricants and care products for all of their maintenance needs,” the press release said.
It’s an interesting twist. Certainly there are big corporations that own other brands used by powersports enthusiasts — Polaris’ ownership of brands like Klim, 509 and Kolpin, or Arctic Cat’s ownership of Motorfist come immediately to mind. However, those brands started out independently first and then were purchased by the larger powersports company.
If one looks into BRP/Bombardier’s own history, however, you can find examples of things going the opposite direction: in fact, the company now known as Camso but previously as Camoplast was actually spun off of Bombardier in 1982. That’s not to imply that XPS will some day be spun off, but rather to note how prevalent Camoplast/Camso tracks are and how they took over the market, but they originally grew out a single OEM.
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