2013 John Deere Gator RSX850i Sport Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

TO BE HONEST, I'm not really a power-sports guy. I'm speaking now of that broad category of gas-powered personal recreational vehicles, the most heinous and loathsome and stupid of which are jet skis. I think we can all agree on that.

Photos: Off-Roading With the Gator

Click to view slideshow. Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal


As for off-roading—and I say this as a veteran of the long-course Baja 1000—it depends. I have a single, massive grudge against recreational all-terrain vehicles, and that is the way they have made it easier for idiots to invade the countryside. I direct your attention to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, where the desert is so crisscrossed with ATV tracks it's practically plaid. Ever spend the weekend at the Imperial Sand Dunes in California? It's like one big, failed alcoholic intervention, with sand dragsters.

Defenders of ATVs argue that only a small percentage of riders go off-trail, litter or act like jerks. That's right: a small percentage, day after day, year after year. Meanwhile, public lands are all but undefended.

So it's hard to celebrate a machine like the John Deere Gator RSX850i Sport—a wildly fun, alarmingly quick and nearly amphibious two-seat off-roader ($15,499), a machine that could make a dead man crack a smile—without also noting that its powers can be used for evil.

The Off Duty Summer 50



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The Gator is a "side-by-side," a four-wheel-drive, off-highway vehicle with dual bucket seating, retractable belts and automobile-style controls, also known as a recreational off-road vehicle (ROV). The side-by-side market is notable for two things at the moment. The first is increased federal scrutiny. ROVs are inherently less stable than their automotive counterparts, due to their high ground clearance and center of gravity, short wheelbase and narrow track, and limber, long-travel suspension.

In 2009, after a slew of lawsuits against Yamaha, the company that broke the category open with the 2003 introduction of its Rhino, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission demanded a voluntary repair program to effect modifications to that vehicle's rear suspension. The feds have drafted new regulations intended to lessen the risk of ROV rollover and passenger ejection; the industry is pushing back, in part by promoting rider safety and responsible riding. Dulce et decorum est. Wear a helmet.

The second notable thing relates to the first: These things are selling like crazy. Category sales increased 22% in 2012, to 166,449 units, according to the Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Association. And as the market proliferates, the machines themselves are mutating, resulting in a strain of super-aggressive sport side-by-sides, with top speeds as high as 75 miles per hour. The Polaris RZR 800, for example, accelerates to 35 mph in 3.8 seconds and boasts a weight-to-power ratio of 18 pounds per horsepower. It's a mere 50 inches wide, with a 77-inch wheelbase, set up on a dual-rate suspension with 9 inches of travel in front. These sorts of parameters send chassis engineers fleeing into the night.

So, a public-health crisis in the making? Strangely, no, and this is where it gets interesting, epidemiologically. Increased sales of side-by-sides are effectively displacing sales of even scarier off-road machines: quads. Quads—what the feds call ATVs, single or tandem-seating machines with motorcycle controls—are involved in around 700 deaths annually and are the fourth most deadly consumer product the agency tracks (for comparison, there were about 170 ROV-related deaths reported in the last 10 years). Quad sales leveled off in 2012 (about 225,000 vehicles) after a several-year decline.

So, whatever their dynamic shortcomings, ROVs actually save lives. That fact needs to play into federal regulators' calculus. My God, I think I just came to the defense of a vehicle manufacturer.

Of course, ROVs could always be more stable, and my first 15 minutes horsing around with the Gator RSX850i Sport Edition—an open-air model with a tube-steel roll cage and plastic doors—was a brisk refresher course on the effects of suspension travel, lateral acceleration and instantaneous roll centers. It didn't take me too long before I had fetched up the inside wheels and teetered on the edge of rolling over. You can trip one of these machines if you try, so don't try.

And yet, driven within its limits, the Gator was surprisingly confident and reassuring, even at its top speed of 53 mph. I had access to a friend's 250-acre farm and was soon ripping around, sliding and drifting the Gator along grassy cultivator trails and sawing at the throttle (brrrapp brappp BRAPPP). The dry-sump, 839-cubic-centimeter, 62-hp V-twin engine is made by, of all companies, Piaggio, and is billed as the first motorcycle engine used in the segment (that will be news to Yamaha and Kawasaki). John Deere estimates that the Gator consumes a gallon of gas per hour in average use.

2013 John Deere Gator RSX850i Sport

Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

Base price: $15,499

Price as tested: $16,000 (est.)

Powertrain: Naturally aspirated, fuel-injected, overhead-valve 839-cc V-twin engine; continuously variable transmission, two-speed transfer case; on-demand four-wheel drive with locking front and rear differentials.

Horsepower/torque: 62 hp at 4,000 rpm/59.5 pound-feet at 4,000 rpm

Length/weight: 113 inches/1,360 pounds

Wheelbase: 72.8 inches

Top speed: 53 mph

Fuel economy: 1 gallon per hour of average operation (mfr.)

Cargo capacity: 400 pounds (cargo box), 800 pounds (total vehicle payload)

With a wet weight of 1,430 pounds, the Gator has a somewhat saner weight-to-power ratio of 23 pounds per horsepower. But it's all thigh. The engine's low-speed torque (59.5 pound-feet) is brash and bumptious, with big lunging moments provoked by the abrupt throttle response. Clambering over a fallen tree takes a surprisingly delicate touch, lest you slam the bottom of the machine. When the trail opens up and you hit the rev limiter in high gear, the engine bleats like an Abrahamic ram.

The Gator, like most of its competitors, uses a snowmobile-like continuously variable transmission to transfer torque to the locked rear differential. The only forward gear selecting is between Hi and Lo gear, the latter limiting the Gator to a braying 30 mph. The Gator's gear-selection lever, situated between the seats, suffers from an ill-defined shift gate, so it was pretty easy to throw the Gator into Lo gear instead of Hi. This spoke to John Deere's proud tradition of lawn equipment.

For the better part of a Friday afternoon, my friends and I caromed down a fiber-optic easement cut deep into the Carolina woods, a seemingly endless track we'd found with the help of a guy whose Ford 4x4 truck was nicknamed "Holler Crawler." The Gator's design compromise between farm/work utility (400-pound cargo capacity) and sport makes the most sense at low to moderate speeds. The same rangy suspension that tends to porpoise and bound in high gear serves up a deeply settled ride at low speeds. At a walking pace over rough terrain, the Gator's coilovers pump furiously while the tube-steel chassis remains relatively undisturbed. However, there are Jesus handles built into the roll cage and between the seats to help passengers hold on, and they will need them.

Our track was a muddy slough with tire ruts that dipped in and out of standing water as much as 2 feet deep. The Gator marched right through most of these. When the machine did get bogged down, it was a simple matter to turn the dash-mounted switch from 2WD to 4WD, engaging the locking front axle. The switch might as well have been marked "Stuck" and "Unstuck."

Look, these things are built-to-cost, outdoor toys, and they are not extravagantly engineered, frankly speaking. The bodywork and interior consoles are flimsy-feeling plastic panels that rattle concussively when the machine takes a hit. The brakes are grabby, the throttle is jumpy and the rack-and-pinion steering makes the Gator feel like an overeager golf cart.

Oh, but man, is it a joyous way to fritter away several gallons of gas. It's a tick-infested roller coaster, a donkey steeplechase. I just love it. But then, I'm not really a power-sports guy.


Corrections & Amplifications
The Polaris RZR 800 has a weight-to-power ratio of 18 pounds per horsepower. An earlier version of this column incorrectly gave the ratio as 5.6 pounds per horsepower.