Can-Am Went For Car-Style Concepts, And They Could Preview Future Product

Car manufacturers have long sketched wild and wonderful concept cars and trucks that have captured people's imaginations. Big lights, pasted-on tires, ludicrous wings and winglets that move and frolic, and interiors that would barely hold you in the seat, but look straight out of science fiction. They're brilliant, fantastical, stupid bucks that likely don't work and would never work if they were even considered for production. 

Concept cars are purely ways to let their designers loose from the constraints of regulations and rules, and to preview what's likely to be their next design language that'll be embodied—somewhat—in the cars they sell to you or me. That concept pipeline, however, doesn't exist in the powersports world. What you see is often what you get, with manufacturers just showing up one day with either all-new, ready-for-production machines or semi-updated things that look nicer than the previous generation. And they're often already on a dealership lot when the news goes live of their introduction.

Can-Am doesn't want to do that anymore and wants to capture the public's imagination while also gauging its interest in what could end up coming to its side-by-sides in the near future. 

The first of these concepts was the previously shown MeatEater Defender HD11, which was little more than just a handful of aftermarket parts done up for those hunters and fishermen, and was damn-near close to what I'd call a perfect side-by-side. However, in its latest drop, which also included the news of its updated lineup, Can-Am's designers and engineers took the idea of a concept from the automotive world and applied it to both the Defender and Maverick R, and went ham.

To understand this semi-confiscated approach, RideApart sat down with Can-Am's Director of Design for Side-by-Side Vehicles, Alain Massicotte, to talk about the future of the brand's concept UTV era, and what these insane machines might mean for the future. 

Defender Prerunner Concept

Maverick R X-Ray

Defender Prerunner Concept

Maverick R X-Ray

Photos by: Can-Am

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RideApart: Can-Am has done these cool concepts for a minute now. Why go the automotive concept car-style route in today's powersport market when no one else is?

Alain Massicotte: Yes, you're right on. This is a culture that has been in the automotive world forever, of the concepts. Is it part of the powersports? Not that much, because if you look at our track record, we've not been into announcing concepts that we would not build. We would announce the product news as what we are doing currently on what would be our next year model year. So it is almost kind of real-time that we announce and it is delivered to our dealers and customers.

However, now we felt that it was the right time, with the mix of the consumers behaviors evolution. You understand that everything that you mentioned with the automotive industry, our customer base is shifting towards linking the powersports, or especially side-by-sides, to their cars or their SUVs or their pickup trucks. So they are expecting from us a level of execution, and we want on our side to make sure that the emotional factor would be also through the roof, not getting into [just] the commodity.

So for all these reasons, we felt that it was the good timing to start sharing some of the concepts that usually we keep more internally or we do focus groups. Maybe you've been part of these focus groups back in the days, but we never do public announcement. So this is why today it was good timing.

Moreover, attaching it with the commitment on one new product news, one impactful product news every six months for the next four years, it was good timing to also share that it will be supported by innovation, not only color schemes and packages tweaking. So this is our way to say basically that Can-Am would up their game in what's coming in the years to come on the side-by-side front.

Maverick R X-Ray

Photo by: Can-Am

RA: So to that end, again, going back to the automotive world of showing design concepts and it usually indicating where certain automakers are headed with design language, with accessories, with the focus of that thing. Are these concepts that have been showed, are they going to showcase things that are going to come into production? 

AM: The reason why we bring this to public, it's turning a qualitative survey that we could do with the focus group into a big quantitative survey. You know what I'm talking about?

RA: Yeah.

AM: So in the last two days, the feedback that we got about the brand identity, the big Can-Am that you see there, about the colors, materials, finishes that we put on these machines, the design language, the surface treatment, the treatment of the bed that we brought just here, because it is really difficult as designers, engineers to think about the future, not being rational sometimes.

If you think about a [Defender], you will put a dumping box and that's it. And you would make the dumping box evolve. In [the case of the Defender 6x6 Prerunner concept's]case, being inspired by a trip that we made at the King of Hammers, you said, "Man, this world and all those inspiring pictures that we put about trophy trucks, pre-runner trucks, we have to try it." So we try it. It's nothing that we announced that would exist, but now with the feedback that we get, it would bring other conversations. Now we are having conversations with people who are saying, "You know what? I've never used the dumping function of my box."

So maybe we could adapt what we are working on right now, these ideas, to something more tangible in the forthcoming lineup. So you are totally right. Let's see those concepts being tools to probe emotions, to probe innovation and functionalities. You're right. But it is not something that, let's say, the world in which we are has our time to understand that conceptual approach, we have to explain it, we have to build education because they could say it's there, it'll be produced like that. Either it will not be produced at all and it's just a showcase and it serves nothing.

The truth is in between.

So this is why when [a Can-Am spokesperson] asked me yesterday for the spec sheet [you asked for], we've not published a detailed spec sheet with numbers about this other than the facts that you can read. If you look at this, you will see that those tires are 35-inch tires. So 35-inch tires times six on the unit plus two spares—it was a statement. So we decided to do so.  So this is what we are doing, and it works so far. So this is that new approach that we have well synchronized with the corporate strategy that we've announced as well.

Defender Prerunner Concept

Photo by: Can-Am

RA: To go back to the things that you have announced and haven't announced, and not going into specific specs just because they are design concepts, I clocked that the Defender concept appears to have the Maverick R exhaust. One of the big things that I have found, especially in my own off-road pursuits, is that a lot of the utility-based models are all naturally aspirated. Are you hearing from consumers that they want forced induction, a little bit more horsepower when they go up to higher elevations? Because I'll be honest, I was up last week or two weeks ago with a competitor and it's naturally aspirated and it felt like anemic. Are you hearing that same kind of conversation from consumers that they want forced induction from it and that's why you possibly added the Maverick R engine?

AM: [The exhaust] sparks conversations for sure. It brings the curiosity that you have while you are trying to pull some information that for sure it's just at the level where we want to have conversations.

But what you just said is right. It would bring the right conversations about what would be the right power level, performance level for a Defender versus what we are offering in the current role of the sports segment. And all those discussions are legit. Likewise for the overall width of the vehicle, the suspension, ground clearance, and everything. So we're not announcing anything with these units. However, we are showing enough, so we would grasp the right level of information to confirm if our plan is the right plan for the years to come. If we get feedback on the fact that, oh no, people are talking or sharing numbers that we think it would be completely off from what we could achieve, we could readapt.

It's part of, again, the tool or the feedback aspect. And what you are saying, we could have a conversation and build a spec sheet of what could be the dream Defender going in high altitude and everything for Utah, for instance. But this, we manage. I think that everything about horsepower, suspension, spec setting, at Can-Am, we are pretty good at it and we love to solve it. Our engineering teams, they strive to work on it. What we wanted to show here in addition to this is the level of innovation functionalities first read that would be beyond the inspection. So again, the same story.

After this, Jonathon, be my guest about what could be the right settings, the right horsepower, the right turbo configuration. You can dream and we will make sure that we would make eventually that dream come true in an accurate way. So this is it.

Gallery: Can-Am SSV Concepts

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Source: Can-Am

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