Snowmobile Collector Transcript

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- Boy, if you go out up here in the Northwoods early in the week, Monday, Tuesday, when there's not a lot of people up here, you find a trail that's a smooth as glass and you're riding an old sled and you tootle along 25, 30 miles an hour winding trail. Man, it don't get no better than that.
[snow mobile engine hums]

My name is Craig Marchbank. I'm a vintage Ski-Doo knucklehead, president of the Snowmobile Racing Hall of Fame in Saint Germain, Wisconsin.

I was a racer for Ski-Doo, very fortunate to be sponsored by Ski-Doo for 30 years. It was a blast.  Traveling around the country, competing, dominating.

We were very prepared when we hit a racetrack. Second wasn't an option. 

Started collecting snowmobiles probably when I was a young man. Started collecting many things. You would go to the race team events and different functions for Ski-Doo and they would give you just different merchandise, and paraphernalia, and coats, jackets, sweaters. And being a collector when I was a young man, I just held on to that stuff. One thing stems from another to another to another. And before you know it, there's 140 sleds here.
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This is my wife and I's collection in Tomahawk, Wisconsin.

We have approximately 140 Ski-Doo snowmobiles, five or six Moto-Skis, and a whole lot of paraphernalia, whether it be sweaters, oil bottles, rings, coats, helmets, gloves, anything you would associate with a Ski-Doo brand or logo.
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This is a 1960 Ski-Doo. First production year for Ski-Doo. Wooden skis. They built just a little over 200 of these machines in '60 and ballpark, what we've all talked about, there's probably only a couple dozen left between Canada and the United States.

This is a 1965 Ski-Doo Santa Sleigh. Very rare. They're like hen's teeth. In all of the years I've been in Ski-Doos, which is about 40, I've only seen three in real life, and this is one of them. Now, she's just a display piece, but we go to shows, we hook it up to a '65 Ski-Doo Chalet and pull it around. 

This is a 1974 Nordic. The early Nordic's were yellow In '73 and '74, they decided to go chocolate brown and wood grain. Somebody thought it was a luxury type look. They chromed it out, brown seat even, and actually, a cigarette lighter, too. Imagine that. This is a 1992 Mach 1X. It's one of the original six that were put on the grass drag racing circuit.  There's only, I think, two, maybe three, left in existence of the six. Extremely dominant machines for their time and era. They banned the snowmobile because it was so fast.

Every single one of these sleds in here runs.  We are still adding to the collection. Yes, it's a blast. I'm still 14 years old, right, in my head until I look in the mirror. Maybe I need to go to Snowmobiles Anonymous. I'm not sure. But yeah, I'd call myself a collector.

[engine revving]

[playful instrumental]

You might see me on a '60s sled one day, '70s, '80s, '90s, 2000s.  You know, you'll see me on a different sled all the time.

It's a blast riding this stuff. And then, you go down a trail on one of these old machines and you're wearing a suit and helmet to match it and everybody just comes and talks to you. They can't believe you're riding this thing out there.

It doesn't get much better than that.
[engine vrooming]

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