A mechanic’s workshop, a rubber track and a small machine for one or two riders.

Ski-Doo is a brand of snowmobile made by BRP Inc., short for Bombardier Recreational Products, and before 2003 by Bombardier Inc. BRP’s own “About BRP” page puts the brand at the very start of the company’s story: “Our first product, the Ski-Doo snowmobile,” it says, “was created in 1959 in Valcourt, Quebec, by J-A Bombardier.”

Valcourt, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, is where Joseph-Armand Bombardier had worked for decades on vehicles for snow. English Wikipedia’s BRP article says that in 1935, in a repair shop in the town, he built a snow vehicle using a drive system of his own; in 1937 he patented and sold the seven-passenger B7 snow coach, used in rural Quebec to take children to school, carry freight and deliver mail. He opened a factory in Valcourt in 1941, and in 1942 the business was incorporated as L’Auto-Neige Bombardier Limitée.

Those early machines were large. In the early 1950s, English Wikipedia says, Bombardier turned to a snowmobile for one or two passengers, and in 1957 he developed a one-piece moulded rubber track that gave a lightweight vehicle enough grip on snow. French Wikipedia adds that, unhappy with rubber suppliers, Bombardier had begun making his own tracks, and that the arrival of small, light, reliable engines in the 1950s made the smaller machine possible.

The first Ski-Doo went on sale in 1959. English Wikipedia says its first customers were people who needed to cross snowy, remote country — missionaries, trappers, prospectors and land surveyors — and that the larger success came later from riders who used it for sport. Supply grew around the machine too: English Wikipedia says Roski was set up in Roxton Falls, Quebec, in 1963 to make composite parts for the Ski-Doo.

Ski-Dog, Ski-Doo and a word in everyday Canadian speech.

The name has its own story, and the sources tell it in slightly different ways. English Wikipedia’s BRP article, citing a January 1992 Popular Mechanics feature, says the vehicle was called the “Ski-Dog” because it was meant to replace the dog sled for hunters and trappers, and that in 1958 “Ski-Doo” was accidentally painted on the first prototype and immediately became the popular name. The Ski-Doo article and another section of the BRP article put the slip in print instead: a typographical error in the first sales brochure. French Wikipedia describes it as a story that the misprinted “g” turned into an “o” in the advertising. English Wikipedia says Bombardier welcomed the change, judging the new name appealing, distinctive and simple to trademark.

The word then left the brand. English Wikipedia says skidoo, sometimes written ski-doo, and the verb skidooing became the usual generic term for a snowmobile in much of Canada. The same article records that Ski-Doos were used on Ralph Plaisted’s overland expeditions of 1967 and 1968, which included Bombardier’s Jean-Luc Bombardier and reached the North Pole on 19 April 1968.

The company changed hands within the family before it changed hands outside it. English Wikipedia says the younger generation reorganised the business from 1964; his son-in-law Laurent Beaudoin became president in 1966 and held the post until 1999. The company became Bombardier Limited in 1967, bought the Austrian engine maker Rotax in 1970 and the rival snowmobile maker Moto-Ski in 1971.

In 2003, English Wikipedia says, Bombardier sold its Recreational Products division to Bain Capital, the Bombardier-Beaudoin family and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The new company, BRP, which calls itself “an independent company since 2003”, has its headquarters in Valcourt.

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.

Summit, MXZ, Renegade — and a museum down the road.

Model families carry much of the modern brand. English Wikipedia says that for model year 2017 Ski-Doo introduced a new chassis and engine pairing it called Gen-4, built around the Rotax 850 E-TEC engine, and released it across lines including the Summit, MXZ and Renegade. The engines come from Rotax, the Austrian company Bombardier bought in 1970. English Wikipedia also notes that Ski-Doo has its own range of snowmobile suits, so the name appears on clothing as well as machines.

The brand sits beside a second snowmobile name inside BRP: the company’s “About BRP” page lists Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles together, alongside Sea-Doo watercraft and pontoons and Can-Am vehicles.

The origin story is kept on public view in the town where it began. English Wikipedia says the Musée de l’ingéniosité J. Armand Bombardier in Valcourt, opened in 1971 and renovated in 1990, is dedicated to Bombardier’s life and to the snowmobile industry, with Ski-Doos, other industrial designs and a collection of books and booklets on display, and that it holds the original garage “factory” where Bombardier built his first snow vehicle, moved to the museum site a few blocks from the BRP factory.

For a design guide, Ski-Doo shows how a single misprinted letter, kept rather than corrected, can give a product a name that people go on to use for the whole category. Compare Sea-Doo, Bombardier’s watercraft brand from 1968, and Can-Am, its stablemate at BRP. For this guide we use track black, Valcourt yellow and drift white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ski-Doo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.