The Textron Badge Years

What changed on the badge

Textron bought Arctic Cat in 2017 and moved the quad and side-by-side lines onto a Textron Off Road badge. Trade coverage at the time described the scope:

“The Arctic Cat brands are being folded into the Textron Off Road banner.”ATV.com, “Textron Off Road Replacing Arctic Cat Name,” published 2017-04-21. Trade press, not a manufacturer statement. Read 2026-09-26.

The snowmobiles kept the Arctic Cat name throughout; the same coverage records the quad and side-by-side change rolling in over about a year. It did not last long. The Arctic Cat name came back to the quads and side-by-sides two model years later.

“would return to its side-by-sides and ATVs beginning with the 2020 model year”Wikipedia, “Arctic Cat,” on the return of the Arctic Cat brand. An encyclopaedia entry, not a primary source. Read 2026-09-26.

Neither vehicle manufacturer publishes a statement fixing the model years the badge covered on quads. The dates that matter for a mount kit are the track manufacturers’ own anyway, taken from where each one filed its rows — and those are below.

Camso followed the badge, and left a hole where it moved

Camso files applications under the Textron name for model years 2018–2019 and for nothing else. Under the Arctic Cat name, its own rows run in these blocks: 1996–2017, 2020–2022.

The break between those blocks is 2018 and 2019, and that is the badge window exactly. Nothing is missing from the catalogue. The rows for those model years exist; they are filed under the make name the machines were wearing at the time.

Kimpex did not follow it

Kimpex never adopted the badge in its filing. Its Commander rows under the Arctic Cat name run 2004–2024 without a break, and the catalogue holds 0 Kimpex applications filed under the Textron name. The badge window is covered continuously, under the older make name, straight through it.

Read the table below with that in hand, because it will report every Textron row as published by Camso only — and that is a fact about a make string rather than about a machine. Kimpex publishes 12 Commander applications touching those same model years, across 12 machine titles. They sit on the Arctic Cat page, because that is where the make name puts them. So if you own a badge-window Alterra, “Camso only” in the table below does not mean no Kimpex kit is published for your machine — it means the Kimpex row is filed under the other make name.

The consequence, across 2 of the 2 badge model years: each manufacturer is reachable under one make name and not under the other. Search the badge on the machine and Camso answers. Search the name the machine is usually called and Kimpex answers. Neither search reports that the other one exists.

The two houses write the same machine two ways

The divergence is not only which make name a row is under. It is also the shape of the row title, and that matters because a search box matches strings.

Every title Camso publishes under the Textron name opens with the displacement figure — 7 of 7. Of the Kimpex titles covering the same model years, 0 of 12 do. Kimpex leads with the model name and puts the figure after it.

Nothing follows from that about which system is better documented. It follows only that the string on the fender matches one house’s convention and not the other’s, which is enough to make a catalogue look empty when it is not. Telling the two badges apart on the machine is a separate job and has its own entry under Identify.

Published applications filed under the Textron name

Two rows can carry the same machine name and not be the same fit. The rear-suspension value and the sprocket pair are what separate them, so read those two columns before the name.

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.

1 row is published by only one of the 2 Camso systems that appear under this make name at all. Camso publishes no reason for it, so if the system you want is the one missing from your row, ask a fitment desk whether a kit for it exists under another row before you settle for the one that is published.

Which machines continue either side of the badge

Stripping the model-year parenthetical off a row title leaves the machine name, and those can be matched across the two make names — but only inside one manufacturer’s own rows, for the reason the previous section gives. Matched against Camso’s Arctic Cat rows, 2 of the 7 machine names filed under Textron also appear on the other side of the badge window:

• 500 Alterra
• 700 Alterra TBX

The remaining 5 have no counterpart in Camso’s Arctic Cat rows at all:

• 570 Alterra / EPS / XT
• 700 Alterra / XT EPS
• 700 Alterra Mud Pro LTD
• 700 Alterra TRV
• 700 Alterra VLX / EPS

For those, the badge window is the whole of Camso’s published coverage of that machine name. That is no published application under that name either side of it, which is a different statement from nothing having been made to work. The Kimpex side cannot be checked the same way at all, because its titles are not written in a form this comparison can match.

Do not stop at that result. Machine names are the weak test; part numbers are the strong one, and they say something different.

The flagged row

1 of the Textron rows carries a published manufacturer condition, and it reads Vehicle with cargo box. Camso publishes the flag and defines it in a legend. It does not publish what has to happen to the box, whether the box goes back on afterwards, or whether the condition is the reason that row appears under one system and not both.

So the flag tells you a condition exists on that row and not what it costs you. Before you order for that machine, ask the shop that would fit it what the condition requires of the box — whether anything comes off, whether it goes back on, and whether it is the reason that row appears under one system and not both. What these flags turn out to mean on specific machines is collected in Field Notes.

The part numbers did not move with the badge

The catalogue publishes 13 distinct part numbers against Textron applications. Every one of them is also published against an application filed under Arctic Cat. The makes those numbers reach beyond Textron are Arctic Cat, Kymco.

Camso changed the make label on the row and did not change the number the row points at. Counted from the other direction: 57 Arctic Cat records, across 30 machine titles and model years 2006–2022, carry a part number the catalogue also publishes against a badge-window row.

So the machine-name comparison in the previous section found continuity for 2 of 7 machines, and the part-number comparison finds it for all of them. The name comparison is the one that is wrong about what happened. Filing moved; hardware did not.

Camso publishes nothing about why one number serves rows spanning that many model years and machine names, and two things follow for you. A part number found on a box or a shelf label does not identify the machine the kit was ordered for, because the number is shared across many — so a used kit advertised by its number tells you little. And a row that shares a number with your machine’s row is not evidence that the kit is correct for your machine; the number is what the two rows have in common, not a statement that they are interchangeable. Both point the same way: order against the model year and the rear-suspension type read off your own machine, and ask for it under both make names.

The pattern runs at the other end of the catalogue too — see Argo, Kymco and TGB, where two makes share a part number between them.

If you are ordering for a badge-window machine

The badge is a filing problem, not a fitment problem. What to carry into the conversation:

• The model year, off the VIN. It decides which make name the row is filed under, and therefore which manufacturer a search surfaces at all.
• The rear-suspension value. That is what separates two rows sharing a machine name, and it is the field to check on the machine rather than assume from the year.
• Both make names.Ask for the machine under Textron and under Arctic Cat. Searching one name returns one manufacturer’s rows with no sign the other exists, and the full Arctic Cat list — badge-window rows folded in — is on the Arctic Cat page.
• Not a part number off a box. The numbers are shared across make names and model years; the year and the rear end are what identify your row.