Arctic Cat or Textron?

What the badge actually was

Textron Inc. announced a definitive agreement to buy Arctic Cat Inc. in January 2017 and completed it that March. The completion release is plain about the corporate outcome and says nothing about product branding:

Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Arctic Cat Inc. by means of a short-form merger under Minnesota law. As a result, Arctic Cat has become an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Textron.Textron Inc. news release, Providence, R.I., 6 March 2017, investor.textron.com, read 2026-09-26

The release announcing the agreement six weeks earlier had gone further, and it is worth reading against what followed:

Arctic Cat will become part of Textron’s Specialized Vehicles business, maintaining its iconic Arctic Cat brand, as well as its current manufacturing, distribution and operational facilities, with a focus on growing the business.Arctic Cat Inc. news release, Minneapolis, 25 January 2017, filed as an exhibit on SEC EDGAR, read 2026-09-26

The brand did not stay on the quads. By the time the following model year was announced, the off-road products carried the Textron name and Arctic Cat was a separate entry in the same portfolio:

Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc., a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced new Textron Off Road ATVs for the 2019 model year, led by the new Alterra™ 570 ATV. […] Textron Specialized Vehicles markets products under the E-Z-GO®, Cushman®, Arctic Cat®, Textron Off Road, Jacobsen®, Dixie Chopper®, Ransomes®, TUG™, Douglas™, Premier™ and Safeaero™ brands.Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc. news release, Augusta, Ga., 13 August 2018, investor.textron.com, read 2026-09-26

That boilerplate is the whole problem in one line. Arctic Cat and Textron Off Road were listed as two brands, and the parts catalogues that had to pick one picked differently.

The name came back, and no manufacturer statement dating the return could be found. Arctic Cat’s current site sells the ATV line as Alterra under the Arctic Cat name and makes no reference to the Textron badge anywhere, with a footer reading © 2026 Arctic Cat Inc. All rights reserved. (read 2026-09-26). The manufacturer’s own Textron-era web property, arcticcat.txtsv.com, no longer resolves. The catalogue evidence below is the only dating worth working from, and for your purposes it is the useful one anyway: it tells you which name to search.

Two shelves, one machine

Camso’s published application guide is organised by make heading, one block per manufacturer, with the vehicle’s displacement and model in separate columns. It carries Arctic Cat and Textron as two separate headings. Read on 2026-09-26, its Arctic Cat block contained no ATV row for either of the badge model years; every Camso ATV application for those two years sat under the Textron heading instead, and the Arctic Cat block resumed afterwards.

The catalogue agrees. Filed under Textron: 13 records, 7 machine rows, model years 2018–2019, published by T4S and X4S. Kimpex records under that heading: none. Filed under Arctic Cat for the same two model years: 12 records, published by WS4.

So the split is not a coverage gap. Both manufacturers published applications for these machines. They simply shelved them under different make names, and neither publishes a cross-reference to the other’s name.

The Textron shelf

Kimpex publishes no per-application condition data at all: every Commander WS4 record in this catalogue has an empty remarks field. The absence of a WS4 entry below means nobody has published a condition for it — not that none exists. Camso is the only manufacturer here that publishes these flags, so this page is necessarily a Camso view of the catalogue.

The Arctic Cat shelf, same two model years

Read the two tables against each other and the shape of the divergence is visible. The Camso side collapses several trims into one row, separating them with a slash; the Kimpex side publishes a row per trim. It also puts the displacement on the other side of the model name. That second habit is the subject of a separate entry, because it applies to every Arctic Cat row in the catalogue and not only to these two years.

One consequence is worth stating flatly: a machine absent from one of these tables has no published application under that make heading. It does not follow that the manufacturer publishes nothing for it, and it certainly does not follow that nothing can be made to fit. Check the other heading before concluding anything.

Telling which badge a machine wears

The badge is a decal. Decals are replaced, and replacing a Textron decal with an Arctic Cat one is a common enough thing to do that the bodywork is evidence rather than proof. What decides it is the model year, because that is the field both catalogues index on. Two routes to it:

• The title, registration or bill of sale. Whatever the bodywork says, the model year on the paperwork is the one a fitment desk will use.
• Arctic Cat’s own year-indexed document archive. Its instruction reads “Choose a model year to find archived Arctic Cat owners manuals, product sheets, brochures, and safety information” and the year list it offered on 2026-09-26 included both badge years — filed, notably, under the Arctic Cat name with no reference to the Textron badge at all. If the manual for a year matches the machine in front of you, that is a second line of evidence for the year.

Arctic Cat publishes no rule for reading the model year out of an ATV identification number. Its customer FAQ, read 2026-09-26, says nothing about where the number is or how to decode it. There is a well-known convention for road vehicles, and an ATV is not a road vehicle, so do not assume it carries over. If you need the year from the machine rather than from paper, a dealer can read the number against the manufacturer’s records.

Which name to search

The rule, stated from the catalogue rather than from the corporate history:

• Model years 2018 and 2019 — look under Textron for T4S and X4S rows, and under Arctic Cat for WS4 rows. Neither name returns both.
• Model year 2017 and earlier, and 2020 and later — look under Arctic Cat for everything. The Textron heading carries nothing outside the badge years.

The Alterra name is not the discriminator and using it as one is the mistake that sends people in circles. Alterra-titled rows in this catalogue span model years 2016–2024, which crosses both badges in both directions. An Alterra can be an Arctic Cat row, a Textron row, or — for the overlap years — one of each.

One more trap in a make selector. Camso’s guide files side-by-sides under the Textron heading as well as quads, and its earliest Textron rows are side-by-sides. A year that appears against Textron in a make-and-year dropdown therefore does not guarantee a quad application exists for it.

The rows with a condition on them

Published conditions on the Textron shelf: 1 of 7 machine rows, namely 700 Alterra TBX (2018-2019) — Vehicle with cargo box. Camso prints the flag as a single letter against the row and glosses the letters in a legend at the head of the page. For the condition above, that gloss is the whole of what is published.

What Camso does not publish is what the condition requires of whoever does the install — what is in the way, whether it comes off, whether it goes back on. The legend on the same page carries one standing caveat and nothing more specific:

Minor modification and light interference are possible on any modelCamso Powersports ATV/UTV Track Systems Application Guide, August 2026 revision, powersports.camso.co, read 2026-09-26

So if your year and trim sits on one of those rows, ask the installing dealer what comes off your machine and whether it goes back on with the tracks fitted, and get the answer before the kit is ordered.

Note also which system publishes the flagged row. Where a condition appears on one Camso system’s row and not the other’s, that is a difference in what each system publishes for that machine, not a statement that the other system fits it without the condition.

Where the rows are collected

This entry is the identification key: which name to search, and why. The data sits elsewhere. The full published application set for both make headings, with the condition flags, rear-suspension values and sprocket pairs the catalogue records, is on the Arctic Cat applications page, which folds the badge years in rather than splitting them. The two badge model years are also treated on their own at The Textron Badge Years.

If you are ordering for one of these

The badge question ends at the make heading. Which exact kit, adapter and anti-rotation hardware your year and trim takes is resolved against the live catalogue, not against a table. Have these five things to hand when you ask, and the badge stops mattering:

• The model year off the paperwork, not off the fender. That is the field both catalogues index on.
• The trim as the manufacturer writes it. The Camso side collapses trims into one row and the Kimpex side splits them, so the trim decides which row you are actually on.
• The rear suspension, rigid axle or independent. Mounting hardware is selected against it.
• Which make heading your row came from, if you found it yourself. Saying “it is the Textron row” saves a fitment desk a search under the wrong name.
• Any published condition on that row, quoted as the catalogue words it, so the shop can tell you what it means on your machine before the kit is ordered.