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You can access the roomy front storage area even if you have
equipment strapped to the front rack. We wouldn’t want to
try it with the full 90 pounds of capacity used up, though.
Polaris pioneered IRS for ATVs, and it remains a great idea
that offers great suspension and amazing ground clearance.
❑ Polaris called its best-selling
Sportsman 500 4x4 ATV a “value”
model, and for 2014, it’s a 570 and a
vastly better value. Its big news for
2014 is the new fuel-injected engine
sourced from the RZR 570 UTV. With
roughly 70 more cubic centimeters of
added displacement, boosting power
a full 20 percent (to 44 horsepower),
the new powerplant is a bonus. And
you have to figure that an engine
designed to push around a UTV is
going to last forever dealing with
300 pounds less. Motivating an ATV
should be a snap. Now consider this:
The electronically fuel-injected (EFI)
If you have a downhill long enough that
you have sustained periods of closed
throttle, the CVT eventually disengages.
A blip of the throttle will restore engine
braking, but we generally just relied on
the powerful brakes.
engine is not the only major upgrade,
and that the price of the base-model
Sportsman 570 is $6499 and you have
a genuine bargain. How much of a
bargain? The 570’s ancestor is the 500
H.O., and it cost $6499 in 1996! You
get EFI, upgrades and eight years of
inflation for free!
The Sportsman 570 is the first time
Polaris has offered Electric Power
Steering (EPS) on a value model,
and the steering feature bumped the
price of our 570 EPS to $7299, but
that still makes the Sportsman 570 a
deal. We don’t see anything about the
new 570 Sportsman that will tarnish
that long-standing best-seller label.
It does seem a little odd that the
Sportsman 570 with the new engine
is a value model when the up-mar-
ket Sportsman 550 EPS is $8699. The
550 is an up-market model that looks
pretty close externally, but it uses a
different chassis with double-A-arm
front suspension and has a motor that
is turned sideways in the chassis, so
the crankshaft and transmission out-
put shaft run parallel. The 550 engine
layout is efficient for a 4x4, but Polaris
uses the 570 engine in many different
models, so the sheer numbers make it
cost-effective.
NEW SKIN, SAME BONES
From the side, the overall look of
the Sportsman isn’t much different,
and that makes sense since the chassis under the bodywork is largely
unchanged. But as soon as you straddle the 570, you notice a difference.
The midsection of the machine was
narrowed over 3 inches to make it
slimmer and more comfortable to
ride. The change is most noticeable
while standing, where the machine
is narrower between your knees, and
your feet are happy that the body
changes allowed engineers to make
the floorboard area wider and longer.
