This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from a 1958 Eliason Motor Toboggan snowmobile advertising brochure.
The vibrant colors and detail of this classic image have been painstakingly brought back to life to preserve a great piece of history.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" format is an excellent image size that looks great as a stand-alone piece of art, or as a grouped visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of these frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
HISTORY OF THE FWD ELIASON MOTOR TOBOGGAN
Inventor and entrepreneur Carl Eliason is regarded by many snowmobile aficionados as the “father of the snowmobile.”
Eliason was born in Michigan in 1899, and he moved to Sayner, Wisconsin with his family in 1909. In 1924, Eliason began designing a powered snow toboggan at his general store in Sayner. His first snow vehicle was a long toboggan with skis for steering, and a track, powered by a 2 ½ hp. outboard motor engine. Eliason received a patent for his Motor Toboggan in 1927.
Over the next several years, Eliason’s Sayner facility produced about 30 of the Motor Toboggans, but production was halted at the start of World War II. At that time, Eliason began negotiating with the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company (FWD) so that a larger number of the machines could be produced for the war effort. About 200 Motor Toboggans were built at the FWD plant in Clintonville, Wisconsin, and in the late 1940’s, production was moved to the Canadian FWD plant in Kitchener, Ont.
The Eliason Motor Toboggan continued to evolve, and in 1953, the pioneering Model K-12 was introduced. The design principles of this unit gave rise to the modern-day snowmobile, and served as an inspiration for Polaris Industries to begin building rear-engine snowmobiles in 1955.
FWD continued to produce the Motor Toboggan until 1963, when the company sold its parts inventory and manufacturing rights to the Carter Brothers of Waterloo, Ont. The Carter Brothers only produced the Motor Toboggan for one year, and the 40-year run of Eliason’s innovative snowmobiles ceased in 1940.
