Back in the late 80's, the US Gov/CPSC put a halt to all imports of 3-wheelers into the US due to underaged kids and inexperienced (or intoxicated) riders hurting or killing themselves these machines. Unfortunately, hi-performance ATV's were lumped into this category, so they also forced the manufacturers to stop putting money into R&D on new sport/hi-perf quads. This all occurred in 1988, and was put in place for 10 years.

The end result of these actions:
- manufacturers stopped making 3-wheelers, period.
- some manufacturers stopped making performance ATV's as well, to save face and keep their names from being associated with death, Tecate dead in 88, 250r in 89, zilla in 90.
- other manufacturers kept a few sport machines, but put zero money into developing new technologies for them. Hence, why we only saw graffix upgrades on the sport machines all thru the 90's including the banshee.

Then, finally in 1998, Honda knew there was money to be made in the US sport/hi-performance ATV market, so they built a moderately powered SPORT quad--the 400EX--to test the waters. Obviously, sales skyrocketed, soooo...some (but not all) of the old manufacturers (and some new ones) jumped on the bandwagon.

I kind of doubt that we'll ever see the hi-performance wars between the manufacturers like we saw back in the early 80's. Every model year, they made engine tweeks, suspension tweeks...anything to make their quads FASTER than everyone else. Today, its ALL ABOUT SAFETY...and it will take a while for the manufacturers to focus on speed again...

my $.05 worth (I wrote a bit more than $.02 worth)