Seven-Quad Stud: 7 Bargain Utility Quads Under $7,500

Arctic Cat, Can-Am, Features, Home Page Slide Show, Honda, Kawasaki, Polaris, Suzuki, Utility, Yamaha — By ATV Mag on March 13, 2009 at 12:00 pm

How much would you like to spend on your next ATV? If you’re like most riders, you’d like the latest and greatest technology, features and performance, but aren’t ready to spend $12,000 — which some top-end 2-up models are now going for.

In choosing our next comparison test before last fall’s ATV Trials in North Carolina, we perused the market looking for an affordable price point for quads with advanced features, comfortable rides and enough power for heavy-duty work and trail riding.

During the search, we noted the addition of some appealing new players in the midsize utility market: Yamaha’s Grizzly 550 FI, Arctic Cat’s 550 H1 EFI and the Polaris Sportsman XP 550 EFI. The prices? About $7,500.

Yamaha’s Grizzly 550 brought the 700’s features down to the midsize segment, while Arctic Cat’s 550 H1 got a lower seat height from the Thundercat. Polaris’ new Sportsman XP has all the attributes of its new big-bore rig — but with a Fuji-built single cylinder engine.

This fresh trio of machines is priced within $400 of each other and, for comparison shoppers, within striking distance of the Kawasaki Brute Force 650 4×4i, Suzuki King Quad 450 4×4 AXi, Honda FourTrax Foreman Rubicon and Can-Am Outlander 500 EFI.

With such a well-stocked shopping list, it looks like you can have it all, without having to sell your dog’s plasma or teach your thieving children to fill Cash4Gold envelopes in their spare time.
We were holed up at the first-rate Brushy Mountain Motor Sports Park, where we performed acceleration testing with our radar gun, trail testing on the park’s rugged, wooded trails, salt bag suspension testing on a closed obstacle course and our seven-person test team gave all machines a thorough physical examination and stress test to spot features important to buyers of all stripes.
With such a reinvigorated class of midsize quads, and a great location in the hills of Appalachia, we had all the players needed for a full-on showdown. Let the games begin!

Arctic Cat hasn’t gotten much love. It’s not for lack of trying, though. A tweak here and a tweak there over the years, along with new home-built engines, prove the Minnesota-based company is certainly paying attention and putting forth the effort. To put it simply, though, its quads just don’t handle well in certain aggressive, playful situations, and more refinement is needed on the 550 H1 EFI.

Arctic Cat 550 H1 EFI. $7,399

Arctic Cat 550 H1 EFI
When it comes to competitive ATV shootouts,Handling characteristics are an important indicator of a machine’s engineering and attention to detail, but it isn’t everything, especially if you’re primarily planning to work with your four-wheeler. Whether it’s a farm field, construction site or patrolling the forest, A.C.’s got you covered with its unique, versatile Speedrack attachment system, 11 inches of ground clearance, a 2-inch receiver and a bountiful 1,050 pounds of towing capacity. Pull onto the trail, give it some gas and the kitty’s eager engine will pounce, but you’ll be greeted with stiff, dicey steering that saps rider confidence. We’ll get to that later.

Inside the frame resides a new 545cc liquid-cooled, fuel-injected single-cylinder engine made by Arctic Cat. Mated to a CVT, the new engine was designed with a unique hemispherical combustion chamber (hence the H moniker) just like Dodge’s Hemi.

Testers found the engine to be an adequate performer — more pull than most 500s, but less than the ferocious V-twin in the Kawasaki. There are other strong points as well — arresting looks, a lower seat height (than traditional Arctic Cats) that makes riders feel connected to the quad, a soft seat and comfy ergonomics that make the Cat’s perch a comfortable one. A very strong engine braking system also got unanimous praise from our riders. In the evaluation notebooks, though, it all kept coming back to the steering.

“Not much confidence when I always feel ‘on the read’ for handlebars that might leave my hands or change direction unexpectedly,” said one tester. “It steers better, suspension reacts better and the whole machine is stable and predictable when driving with positive weight transfer (read: on the gas) in effect.”

While it was noted that the company lightened the steering effort with longer A-arms that reach deeper inside the wheels, every other tester offered variations on the steering theme.

“The front end wanted to wander a lot when on the brakes and going down hills,” said our 26-year-old resident sportsman. “It made trail riding uneasy and you can never really be confident in where the machine is going to go.”

One tester also went off about the new front diff lock switch, which he said was “tough to engage with one finger when I had gloves on.” As a hunter, he loved the two-inch receiver and found redemption with the rack system, which he said was the easiest to use and has a vertical section in back to help keep loads in place. With a full, 200-pound load of salt bags on the front and rear racks (80 pounds in front; 120 in back), the Arctic Cat turned in a mixed performance, unsteady up front, but the load stayed in place and we suspected it could haul even more.

Suspension performance is quite good on smooth trails and through sweeping turns, where the 550 H1 delivers a fairly plush ride. To get a handle on performance in all conditions, we tested on rocky trails with lots of elevation change. Each hard jump landing or choppy trail brought front-end wandering and illuminated the chassis’ penchant for transmitting harshness through the bars.

This Cat’s steering received the harshest criticism of the comparison, and moved this quad to the back of the pack. Not looking to aggressively trail ride? This might be the one for you, with top-notch utilitarian features, a tall stance, strong power and fantastic engine braking.

Honda FourTrax Foreman Rubicon. $7.499

Honda FourTrax Foreman Rubicon

A Honda in sixth place? As the best selling ATV brand, how can this be? The answer is simple. While proud Honda owners think the world of their quads and enjoy top-shelf reliability and fit and finish, many of the company’s ATVs are still running on passé platforms with outdated features and performance.

While the economy may not have improved since the 2001 debut of the Rubicon, ATVs have come a long way in comfort, utility, design, power and electronic goodies. With a few exceptions like available power steering, push-button shifting, adjustable suspension and GPS (GPScape models), Honda’s utility quads need an update, and the Rubicon is no different. Let’s take a look.

Our FourTrax Foreman Rubicon came sans the on-board GPS and power steering to come in below our $7,500 limit, by a single dollar. That figure, however, includes Honda’s high-tech, automotive-style automatic transmission that allows do-it-yourself push-button shifting, like some sports cars are now offering. Interesting.
The engine is delightfully smooth and happy to rev — a 499cc liquid-cooled single that’s longitudinally mounted for a narrow center tunnel, like the Polaris XPs. The transmission is an odd duck, fully automatic (not a CVT), but you can also shift it yourself with handlebar-mounted buttons.

Acceleration testing proved what we felt: the Rubicon’s power underperforms, taking 3.57 seconds to hit 30 mph. Yamaha’s Grizzly got up to the same speed in 3.15 seconds. The gulf grows with speed, as the Yamaha took 3.29 seconds to go from 20 to 40 mph, while the Rubicon needed a sluggish 5.44 ticks.

With a full load on the Rubcon’s well-designed front and rear racks, the machine’s steering effort seemed to vary wildly. Front-to-rear and side-to-side stability was mid-pack, but the weight highlighted the rig’s lack of power and small stature.

Like Blueblockers with a Ratt Live in Germany ’87 sweatshirt, the Rubicon shows its age with its suspension — a swingarm rear-end that stands out like a sore thumb, or back. Where every other quad has an independent rear, the Honda does without and has a scant 6.7 inches of travel. Compare that to 10 inches for the Arctic Cat. Ground clearance is also below average at 7.5 inches, where the Suzuki has 10.2 and the Yamaha offers nearly a foot.

Out on the trails, riders praised the positives: solid engine braking, high quality construction, a tight turning radius and steering engineered with a surgeon’s precision.

The gang had nearly unanimous thoughts on the auto/ESP push-button transmission, questioning why you’d want to shift it yourself, and noting that the fully auto mode didn’t have enough ratios for the taxing uphill sections. One rider said he figured people will mess with the ESP once in a while “just because it’s there,” but said he didn’t see the advantage over a CVT. Another rider liked having the ability to shift the transmission yourself, particularly in rugged terrain.

The tranny is still a cool, failsafe feature and Honda’s quality is evident. On the whole, though, our team felt the Rubicon was generally behind the times and, in this test, the competition.

Suzuki King Quad 450 4x4 AXi. $6,699

Suzuki King Quad 450 4×4 AXi
Whether it’s the acceleration testing or editor opinions, our rankings tightened in the middle of the pack, a close shave. At the end, the Suzuki King Quad 450 dropped down into fifth place for its smaller engine and sketchy front-end handling.

That doesn’t mean the welterweight Suzuki doesn’t have its own little fan club going, your author included. You see, while it may have the smallest engine of the group, it’s an overachiever that’s surprisingly zippy for a small-displacement single — the only 450 in the group. Behind the bars and down the trail, the KQ feels light, agile, well screwed together, has accommodating ergonomics, useful storage and strong, progressive brakes with independent levers.

Other key characteristics include independent suspension with more than 7 inches of travel that some felt bottomed out too easily, and more than 10 inches of clearance. It’s also fuel injected, has a locking front differential and can tow more than 900 pounds.

Our cargo test documented racks with lots of hook points, but smaller load surfaces than many of the competitors. Fully loaded, the King Quad was a great pack mule with little detectable instability.

“This is a solid machine for hauling weight, and it has very user-friendly racks,” read one hauler’s notes.

Sounds good so far, but this contestant has a skeleton in its closet and, like the Arctic Cat, it’s all about the front-end handling. We’ve said it before about the larger King Quad 750, which shares its platform for the 450, but these Suzukis have steering that chases ruts, magnifies bumps and is prone to sudden oversteer.

“The handling was a huge problem for me,” read one notebook. “When entering a corner with any bumps in it, the handlebars would suddenly be ripped to full lock for no reason. I just couldn’t get comfortable with aggressive trail riding.”

There were a lot of positives scattered throughout the notes, too, like logically placed controls, separate brake levers, a power outlet and a ride that was taut, not a softie, and provided a connected feel on the trail.

“This was a class winner a few years ago and it remains a wonderful, do-everything ATV,” one said.

“Other machines with updates have passed the Zuk’s comfort and handling offerings, but with its low price, this might be the best bang for the buck.”