Snowmobiling and Culture in the 1960s and 1970s

The vintage items are always the most interesting ones in any category.

Updating Parts for Snowmobiles for the coming season, I have come across loads of carburetor reeds, clutches, bumpers and other necessary parts, but nothing all that interesting until I got into the Vintage Snowmobile Parts page. There are lots of parts and bits of memorabilia from the 1960s and 1970s, which is when I was born and grew up.

Things that were normal at the time seem a bit odd today.

The first example is shown at right: a Sno-Jet snowmobile ashtray, from back in a time when it was a good idea to put your logo in an ashtray. Seemed reasonable enough at the time. People were going to leave it out, right within arm’s reach. They were pretty sure to look at it and see the logo, at least until it was covered in butts.

There were a couple from Ski Doo, but I doubt they make any these days.

I think the current owner, who probably does not smoke, would react pretty badly if someone snubbed a cigarette out in it today. It sold for $55.99.

The 1970’s saw not just a more cavalier attitude toward our health, but also toward comfort and safety, as seen in the next interesting item: an original vintage Ski Doo Ski Boose.

This one sold for $150.

It looks to me like something I would pay money to avoid riding in.

They took a couple of skis, put trailer springs on them upside down, and you sat in a box suspended on the springs. The box was located directly behind a snowmobile, devices known to occasionally sling rocks, ice, mud and snow behind them as they go. More modern ones have creature comforts like windshields and seats, but are mechanically pretty much the same.

Would it have been so hard to put a windshield and a seat back then?

The last one is my favorite: a relic from the sexual revolution. A button that says, “I like sex and Arctic Cat snowmobiles” was probably pretty racy and hip at the time. Now I think the word would be campy.

The problem these days, as some of us are discovering when old pictures are scanned and posted online, is that if you wear a button like that and someone snaps a cellphone picture of it and puts it on Facebook, you’re tagged with it for life. Destined to somehow transform from hip to camp in a more public way than was ever before possible.