Bombardier’s motocross name.

Can-Am was created by Bombardier, the Quebec company that Joseph-Armand Bombardier had founded at Valcourt in 1942 as L’Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée, and which had built the Ski-Doo snowmobile. English Wikipedia says Joseph-Armand Bombardier had designed his first snow vehicle in a Valcourt repair shop in 1935, and that the Ski-Doo name dates from 1958, when “Ski-Doo” was painted on a prototype intended to be called the Ski-Dog. English Wikipedia dates Can-Am’s creation as a Bombardier subsidiary to 1972. The name, it says, came from a competition among Bombardier employees and reflected the Canadian and American markets the motorcycles were aimed at; because a sports-car racing series already used the name, Bombardier had to buy the rights to it.

The first headquarters was a barn, which English Wikipedia says still stands at Bombardier’s test facility a few miles south of Valcourt, with design and engineering offices on one side and fabrication on the other. The motorcycles were designed from scratch by the engineers Gary Robison, Bob Fisher and Camille Picard with Jeff Smith, a former 500cc motocross world champion. Following the approach of the Spanish maker Bultaco, they built a standard-size frame that could take engines of different sizes, and the engines came from Rotax, the Austrian engine maker that was another Bombardier subsidiary.

The bikes were made for motocross and enduro, and English Wikipedia lists Rotax engines of 125, 175, 248, 366, 500 and 800cc in the range. Can-Am riders competed in the International Six Days Trial and in American motocross in the 1970s, according to the article.

English Wikipedia says that after the 1973 oil crisis cut demand for recreational vehicles, Bombardier moved its priorities toward transit equipment and, later, aircraft, and investment in the motorcycles was reduced.

Licensed out, then revived.

In 1983 Bombardier licensed the brand and outsourced development and production of Can-Am motorcycles to Armstrong-CCM Motorcycles of Lancashire, England, English Wikipedia says, and 1987 was the last year of Can-Am motorcycle production. A 250cc road-racing motorcycle released in 1983, with two 125cc Rotax engines on a shared crankshaft, was among the last new designs, according to the same article.

The recreational business itself changed hands. In 2003 Bombardier Inc. spun off its Recreational Products Division, which was sold to a group made up of Bain Capital, the Bombardier-Beaudoin family and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, English Wikipedia says. The new company, BRP — short for Bombardier Recreational Products — is based in Valcourt and also owns Ski-Doo, Sea-Doo, Lynx and Rotax.

BRP brought the Can-Am name back for its all-terrain vehicles. English Wikipedia’s Can-Am article dates the return to 2006, with the Can-Am Off-Road range, while its BRP article says the ATV line was renamed Can-Am in 2007; we give both dates. The off-road range now includes the Outlander and Renegade ATVs and the Commander and Maverick side-by-sides, which English Wikipedia lists among the Can-Am models.

The second revival was on the road. BRP announced the Can-Am Spyder, a three-wheeled roadster with two wheels at the front and one at the rear, in February 2007, and its chief executive, José Boisjoli, said the roadsters would be assembled in Valcourt, New Atlas reported. A BRP press release published by ATV Magazine on 17 September 2007 said the first 2008 Spyder had rolled off the Valcourt assembly line, powered by a Rotax 990 V-twin. English Wikipedia says the simpler Ryker followed in 2018.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make powersports machines: motorcycles, snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, side-by-sides and personal watercraft. Some grew out of larger industrial groups and only later attached their names to leisure machines; others were set up from the start to build engines and the vehicles around them, and a few now build machines under more than one name.

A powersports brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single badge than by a set of habits: a livery colour repeated across a range, model names and number codes on side panels, decals that change from season to season, and race teams that put the same colours in front of a crowd. Because the company behind a name may have been sold, spun off from a larger group or folded into a new owner, the questions worth asking are plain ones: who started it, who owns it now, and where its vehicles are actually built.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Valcourt and Juárez.

Can-Am vehicles are built in more than one country. The Spyder has been assembled in Valcourt since 2007, according to BRP’s statements at the time. For the off-road range, SnoRiders West reported on 12 May 2014, citing a BRP news release, that BRP had opened its first Mexican factory in Ciudad Juárez in 2001 and that the plant made Can-Am and side-by-side vehicles; it added that a second Mexican plant had opened in Querétaro in 2012 and that BRP planned a third, also in Juárez, with operations expected to begin in late 2015. BRP’s own list of locations names sites in Valcourt, Querétaro and Ciudad Juárez. English Wikipedia says BRP has manufacturing facilities in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Finland and Austria, where Rotax engines are made.

The on-road range has its own vocabulary. English Wikipedia’s Spyder article describes the F3 as the sport-cruising line and the RT as the touring line, with the Ryker as the simpler entry model, and notes that the manufacturer calls the vehicle a “roadster” rather than a trike.

The motorcycles have also returned. In March 2022 Can-Am announced two electric motorcycles, the Pulse and the Origin, English Wikipedia says, and production began in 2024 for the 2025 model year — the brand’s first two-wheelers since 1987. The Can-Am name now covers three kinds of vehicle under one owner: off-road ATVs and side-by-sides, the three-wheeled Spyder and Ryker, and the electric motorcycles.

For a design guide, Can-Am shows how a dormant name can be revived and stretched across very different vehicles while keeping its origins in Valcourt. Compare Ski-Doo, the snowmobile that began the Bombardier recreational business, and Sea-Doo, its personal-watercraft sister brand at BRP. For this guide we use black, a signal yellow and grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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