BRP Inc.
BRP Inc. is a Canadian manufacturer of snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, side by sides, motorcycles, and personal watercraft. It was founded in 2003, when the Recreational Products Division of Bombardier Inc. was spun off and sold to a group of investors consisting of Bain Capital, the Bombardier-Beaudoin family and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Bombardier Inc., was founded in 1942 as L'Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée by Joseph-Armand Bombardier at Valcourt in the Eastern Townships, Quebec.
, BRP had about 5,500 employees; its revenues in 2007 were above US$2.5 billion. BRP has manufacturing facilities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Finland, and Austria. The company's products are sold in more than 100 countries, some of which have their own direct-sales network.
BRP's products include the Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Can-Am ATVs and Can-Am motorcycles, Sea-Doo personal watercraft, and Rotax engines. The Ski-Doo was ranked 17th place on CBC Television's The Greatest Canadian Invention in 2007.
History
In January 1934, a blizzard prevented Joseph-Armand Bombardier from reaching the nearest hospital in time to save his two-year-old son, Yvon, who died from appendicitis complicated by peritonitis.Bombardier was a mechanic who dreamed of building a vehicle that could "float on snow". In 1935, in a repair shop in Valcourt, Quebec, he designed and produced the first snowmobile using a drive system he developed that revolutionized travel in snow and swampy conditions.
In 1937, he patented and sold 12 of the 7-passenger "B7" snow coaches. They were used in rural Quebec to take children to school, carry freight, deliver mail, and as ambulances. In 1941, Bombardier opened a factory in Valcourt.
In 1942, L'Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée was founded in Valcourt.
During World War II, the Government of Canada issued wartime rationing regulations. Bombardier customers had to prove that snowmobiles were essential to their livelihood in order to buy one. The company then shifted its focus to the arms industry.
In 1947, during a blizzard in Saskatchewan, the company received positive press coverage when army snowmobiles resupplied isolated radio communication towers.
In 1948, the Government of Quebec passed a law requiring all roads to be cleared of snow; Bombardier's sales fell by nearly half in one year. Armand Bombardier therefore decided to diversify his business, first by producing tracked snowplows sized for use on municipal sidewalks, replacing horse-drawn vehicles, then by making all-terrain vehicles for the mining, petroleum, and forestry industries.
The machines had removable front skis that could be replaced with front wheels for use on paved or hard surfaces, thus providing greater utility to his large snowmobiles. In 1951, the wooden bodies were replaced with sheet steel, and these vehicles were powered by Chrysler flathead six-cylinder engines and 3-speed manual transmissions.
In the early 1950s, Bombardier focused on developing a snowmobile for one or two passengers. A breakthrough occurred in 1957 when Bombardier developed a one-piece molded rubber continuous track with enough durability to provide snow-gripping traction for lightweight vehicles. The vehicle was called the "Ski-Dog" because it was meant to replace the dog sled for hunters and trappers. However, in 1958, "Ski-Doo" was accidentally painted on the first prototype, and immediately became the popular name.
The public soon discovered the fun of speedy vehicles zooming over snow, and a new winter sport was born, centered in Quebec. In the first year, Bombardier sold 225 Ski-Doos; four years later, 8,210 were sold. Bombardier slowed promotion of the Ski-Doo line to prevent it from crowding out other company products, while still dominating the snowmobile industry against competitors Polaris Industries and Arctic Cat.
In 1963, Roski was created in Roxton Falls, Quebec as a manufacturer of composite parts for the Ski-Doo. In the 1960s, V-8 engines were added.
On February 18, 1964, J. Armand Bombardier died of cancer at age 56. Until then, he oversaw all areas of operation and controlled the research department, making all the drawings himself. The younger generation took over, led by Armand's sons and sons-in-law, reorganizing and decentralizing the company. The company adopted computer inventory, accounting, and billing. Distribution networks were improved and increased, and an incentive program was developed for sales staff. That year, a survey was mailed to Ski-Doo owners to find out how the product was being used. Germain Bombardier, who had been groomed by his father, took over the company upon his father's death in 1964. He quit and sold his shares in 1966 after a disagreement with other family members. Laurent Beaudoin, the son-in-law of the founder, then became president, a position he held until 1999.
In 1967, the company was renamed Bombardier Limited. By that time, the snowmobiles were very useful for the Inuit.
In 1968, Clayton Jacobson II invented the jet ski and the company licensed his patents to create the Sea-Doo personal watercraft.
On January 23, 1969, the company became a public company, listing on the Montreal Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange.
In 1969–1970, the standard round windows reminiscent of portholes were replaced with larger rectangular windows that provided more interior light. A change was made to the Chrysler Industrial 318 engines with the automatic Loadflite transmissions.
In 1970, the company acquired Rotax, an engine manufacturer based in Gunskirchen, Austria.
In 1971, Bombardier acquired Moto-Ski. Also in 1971, Bombardier launched Operation SnoPlan, a program to promote snowmobile safety after a mounting death toll due to snowmobile accidents.
In the 1970s, the company began producing Can-Am motorcycles, which included Rotax engines.
By 1990, the first product of the company, the Ski-Doo snowmobile, had become its weakest part, producing deficits and high inventories.
In 2001 Bombardier purchased the Evinrude Outboard Motors and Johnson Outboards trade names for the insolvent Outboard Marine Corporation.
In 2003, the company sold Bombardier Recreational Products to a group of investors: Bain Capital, Bombardier Family and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec for $875 million.
In May 2025, José Boisjoli announced that he would be retiring before the end of the year. In December 2025, it was announced that Denis Le Vot would be succeeding José Boisjoli as President and Chief Executive Officer.
Snowmobiles
Before the start of the company's development of track vehicles, Joseph-Armand Bombardier experimented with propeller-driven aerosleds. His work with snowplane designs can be traced to before 1920. He quickly abandoned his efforts to develop a snowplane and turned his inventive skills to tracked vehicles.From the start, the company made truck-sized half-track vehicles, with skis in the front and caterpillar tracks in the rear, designed for the worst winter conditions of the flatland Canadian countryside. After producing half-tracks in World War II for the Canadian Army, the company experimented with new forms of track systems and developed an all-tracked, heavy duty vehicle designed for logging and mining operations in extreme wilderness conditions, such as heavy snow or semiliquid muskeg. They produced it under the name Muskeg tractor.
Each track is composed of two or more rubber belts joined into a loop. The loops are held together with interior wheel guides and exterior cleats, commonly called grousers. The tracks are driven by a large drive sprocket that engages the grousers in sequence and causes the track to rotate. Two belt tracks were common on early model Bombardiers and muskeg machines. For deep-snow use, wider tracks, employing additional belts, are used for added flotation over the snow.
The research for the track base made it possible to produce a small, continuous-rubber track for the light one- or two-person snowmobile the founder of the company had dreamed about during his teen years. This led to the invention of snowmobiles.
The company created the snowmobile market, and held its own after international competitors entered the market in the late 1960s. From the 1940s through the early 1970s, Bombardier built the most successful snowcat models ever produced by any snowcat manufacturer. The B12 seated 12 people, and the C18 seated 18. Both were similar in design with long tracks in the rear and skis used to steer the vehicle. The B12 and C18 were very fast for their day, with speeds over the snow exceeding 30 miles per hour. Most historic and most modern snowcats have a top speed of barely 20 mph. The Bombardier B12 and C18 were probably the precursors to the more modern snow coach used by resorts for transporting tourists. In their day, the B12 and C18 vehicles were used as school buses, mail delivery and emergency vehicles in northern United States and Canada, and were best suited to flat land conditions, frozen roadways, or frozen lakes. While more than 3,000 of the Bombardier B12/C18 variants were produced, Bombardier had competitors in both the North American and world markets. Most of the Bombardier production stayed in North American. The front ski design was incapable of being used in deep snow and rough ground conditions, which opened the door for the development of dual-track and quad-track snowcats. Unfortunately, the front ski design was not easily adapted to change for other ground conditions, so while it was successful on flat lands, frozen lakes, and snow-covered roads, it could not compete on rough, off-road conditions. The combination of the lack of design flexibility, incompatibility with off-road conditions, and the advent of modern snowplowing practices of public roadways beginning in the 1950s, and becoming common in remote areas by the 1960s, probably led to the demise of the B12/C18 design. Today, B12s are still in used in large-scale ice fishing in northern Canada.
Notable competitors included the Aktiv Snow Trac ST4 from Sweden, Thiokol, and Tucker Sno-Cat from the USA. The Snow Trac was produced, virtually unchanged, until 1981, but it was successful, with over 2,000 units sold, and it was used all over the globe for exploration and commercial purposes, as well as the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. Tucker Sno-Cat grew to become one of the world's largest builders of these vehicles, and produces a range of large commercial and exploration vehicles from its location in Medford, Oregon, USA. Thiokol produced popular units, notably the Imp, Super Imp, and Spryte models, but changed ownership and name several times before going out of business in 2000 as the Logan Machine Company and manufacturer of the LMC brand.