Snow Trac
The Snow Trac is a small personal Snowcat that is roughly the size of a modern compact car.
In 1954, Lars Larsson, the chief design engineer for a Swedish farm equipment company, AB Westeråsmaskiner, decided to develop a tracked vehicle to take him and his brother on fishing trips in the winter.
It runs on two rubber tracks powered by a Volkswagen flat 4 industrial boxer style engine and is suitable for both deep snow and soft surface use.
While manufactured in Sweden, the Snow Trac proved to be a successful export with over half sold to North America.
The REME Museum at MOD Lyneham in England has a Royal Marines Snow Trac on display as part of its Military Tracked Vehicle collection.
Military units also had the fuel tank moved outside the cabin area and mounted over the left (driver's side) track on the cargo ledge.
The crawler track design was well suited for either sand or snow use but was not generally suitable for rocky all-terrain use.
The Trac/Snow Master was equipped with a longer and wider track that made it more suitable for the deepest soft snow conditions.
The Snow Trac is made up largely of off the shelf automotive and industrial parts supplied by Volkswagen including an air cooled flat 4 industrial version of VW Beetle engine, a VW Bus transmission, and hundreds of surplus parts including steering wheels, shift knobs, and lighting components.
A proprietary drive variator was adapted to the transmission to allow the use of a steering wheel to control the tracks.
Other resorts and hotels also use Snow Tracs and other models of snowcats to provide tours to remote snowbound areas.
Snow Tracs in use today are often modified and it is common to find overheating problems plaguing these machines because heat shield have been removed to make it easier to work on the engines.
In 1967, a toy maker in Melbourne, Australia, produced a snap together model kit of the Snow Trac.
The Snow Trac was part of their "Polar Base" series that took inspiration from the ANARE activities in Antarctica.
The Snap-A-Roos series by Aurora, included an "Antarctic Explorers" box set that contained the Snow Trac model.
