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Mudding the Can-Am Maverick X Ds 1000R Turbo to the Breaking Point

The Honda Odyssey was ahead of its time. I’m not talking about the minivan, but the first Odyssey, which was an awesome little dune buggy. (Strangest name reappropriation ever, Honda!) Back when ATVs were still in their infancy, Honda built what would now be called a UTV, essentially an ATV with a steering wheel, a bucket seat and a roll cage.

That machine never really caught on, but the genre it spawned is now big business: everyone from Arctic Cat to Kubota makes a side-by-side, and each year these buggies become ever more powerful, quick and expensive. It was inevitable that someone would build one with a factory turbocharger, and BRP got there first with the Can-Am Maverick X Ds 1000R Turbo. Equipped with a 121 hp, 976-cc V-twin, it’ll till your field at 82 mph. Base price: $22,099.

I take the Maverick to a weekend-long off-road bacchanalia at Outback ATV Park in Laurinburg, N.C. I’m not sure whether it’s called Mud-Fest or Mudapalooza or the Mudtacular Mudathon, but the gist is this: 300 or so ATVs and side-by-sides, getting up to all sorts of hijinks. The 700-acre property features a motocross course, a dirt drag strip and a mud race track—which is laid out like a road course, if the road were buried beneath a layer of soupy mud interspersed with deep water holes. There are also miles of trails and a pond where I learn that ATVs can be fitted with such enormous tires that your four-wheeler will float, turning it into a small, unstable boat.

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I’d kind of assumed that I’d have the baddest machine at Outback, what with my four-wheel-drive, auto-locking front diff and 15 to 16 inches of travel out of Fox Racing suspension. Plus, you know, the turbo. But pretty immediately I notice that hardly anybody has a stock machine, with huge tires and jacked-up suspension being the norm. People have stereos and aftermarket turbos and beefy winches. The side-by-side, it seems, is but a blank palette upon which the modern outdoorsman sketches the vision of his all-terrain desire, which is certainly louder and faster and ballsier than anything you find straight out of the showroom.

So even if my compatriots are a little blasé toward the stock Maverick, I certainly am not. The Maverick only weighs about 1,400 pounds, so 121 horsepower is enough to generate serious roost when you’re in two-wheel-drive. The Maverick even has two keys—a grey one that limits the power, and a black one that gives you full boost. I go with the black one, pretty much at all times.

Out on the mud track, the Maverick reigns. While most of the ATVs and side-by-sides slog through the muck, the Can-Am has enough power to get up on top of it, skimming along the surface like a water bug. I actually have to hit the brakes for corners, which, trust me, is unique among the traffic out there. The only place the Maverick seems to struggle is in the deep water hole just ahead of the start/finish line. There, engine revs don’t match forward progress, which should alert me that some slippage is happening in the CVT transmission. In these kinds of situations, you’re supposed to drop it in low range. But I’m on a muddy endorphin high, my clothes totally soaked, caught up in the moment and cranking off fast laps. That is, until I break the drive belt in the deep hole.

Now, belt failure is common on these things. They’re designed so that if you’re being a real idiot, the belt will serve as the fuse that reins in your shenanigans before something more expensive blows up. Case in point: earlier that day I’d seen a Maverick eat a belt when its owner was using it as a tow boat in a pond, dragging around a buddy on an inflatable raft. Mavericks are not meant to be used as MasterCrafts, and the belt underscored the point.

As I hose off my clothes, a guy camping nearby tells me that he broke a CVT belt on the first weekend he owned his ATV. “It’s 40 bucks and takes five minutes to change,” he says. “It’s no big deal.” One of his friends chimes in and points out that a broken belt is preferable to the alternative. “I wish I had a broken belt,” he said. “I have a Polaris, and it doesn’t use a belt. I trashed the whole transmission. I’m still waiting to get it back from the dealer.”

For its part, BRP tells me that the Turbo uses the new Quick Response System CVT, which has clutches that grip the belt tighter than prior designs, reducing heat. They also tell me that I am the first person to break a QRS belt, and that includes the one in the Maverick Turbo that won its class at this year’s Mint 400. So that’s an achievement, of sorts. Perhaps I should’ve brought the Maverick X MR DPS, which is the model designed for mud-running.

Or I could’ve made like the majority of the crowd at Outback and stayed on the sidelines, remaining clean, drive belt intact, just enjoying the show. On my next visit, I’ll be more canny. In the meantime, I’ve got some cleaning to do.