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Ski-Doo is a brand name of snowmobile manufactured by Bombardier Recreational Products. The first Ski-Doo was launched in 1959. It was a new invention of Joseph-Armand Bombardier. The original name was Ski-Dog, but a typographical error in a Bombardier brochure changed the name Ski-Dog to Ski-Doo.
The first Ski-Doos found customers with missionaries, trappers, prospectors, land surveyors and others who need to travel in snowy, remote areas. The largest success for the snowmobile came from sport enthusiasts, a market that opened the door to massive production of snowmobiles. This popularity led to skidoo (sometimes ski-doo), with the derived verb skidooing (or ski-dooing), becoming the traditional generic term for snowmobile in much of Canada.
In early 2016 Ski-Doo announced that they are releasing an all new snowmobile engine and chassis. Most of the 2 stroke engines from Ski-Doo as well as its competitors mainly featured 800cc motors (for the newer snowmobiles). Ski-Doo announced that in its new line of model year 2017 snowmobiles, they would have an 850cc motor. That motor (the Rotax 850 E-Tec) was designed with an all new chassis, not designed separately. The new motor and chassis makes the snowmobile more agile, responsive and powerful. Ski-Doo named this new chassis/motor combination "Gen-4" and was released in several different models (Summit, MXZ, and Renegade).