Now that we have some miles on it, I wanted to do a little walk around and show you some of the details of the Speed to hopefully answer some questions you might have.

Transcription:

(0:00) Hey everybody, Nick Olson Chupacabra Off-Road. Welcome back to the channel. We took delivery of our Speed UTV, this is Master number six, and I wanted to do a little bit of a walk-around, kind of an unboxing if you will, even though we did take it out and put a couple rides on it. Just want to go through some of the basic features, give you some closer looks while we got it all clean, and a little bit of initial feedback and some of the more details if you guys haven't seen this machine or heard much about it.

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(0:36) Speed UTV is the new OEM manufacturer. It's created by Robbie Gordon and his team. Robbie Gordon has a long past in off-road racing, all different types of racing and motorsport, and he had an idea to bring a new vehicle to market and here we are. I'm one of the first to have one in real life, but a lot of questions we got last weekend, we had to stay out at a big event in Utah, were, "Hey, what engine is it? What is it? Where is it from?" So a couple quick particulars if you don't know much about it: this is called an El Jefe, which is their four-seat model. They have three models; they have two shorter two-seat versions, so an El Diablo which is a 110-inch wheelbase, 10 inches shorter than this at 120, and they have a Bandit model which is a two-seater which is even a little shorter than that at 96 inches of wheelbase.

(1:22) This is the LE model, so there are a couple features that come stock with it that I wanted to touch on that are very cool. I was one of the early buy-in buyers, so myself and a couple other lucky customers picked this up for a retail base price value of $32,000. So a lot of what you see came stock on the vehicle at that price, and I'll go over some of the accessories that I added that bumped the price a little bit, but by far and large what you're seeing here is what I picked up for $32,000 plus tax, license, and fees. So starting off, the first thing you're going to notice is the custom wrap, so there's probably not going to be any other speeds that look exactly like mine or each other because you can pick the wrap colors that you want. There's an online website, uhutv.com, there's an online builder you can kind of design, and this is the design that I came up with and that's kind of a nice feature to customize and make your rig look unique to you.

(2:12) So some of the features we'll get into that are some of my favorite or really got me excited about this car, the base price are the base essentials, which is a speed engine. It's a 999cc turbo powered motor, puts out 225 horsepower stock. I opted for the one dollar upgrade to the speed key which I will be getting soon once I hit a 500-mile break-in, and that bumps this horsepower from 225 to 300 as long as I add E85 fuel. So that's a cool feature that no other UTVs on the market have. It's also a CVT belt-driven UTV like Polaris and Can-Am, most popular models on the market. It has basically speed everything, so speed developed their own shocks, their own chassis, their own wheels, their own motor, their own tires, their own seats, most of all their own accessories, pretty much everything on this is speed UTV branded. So pretty cool, it's a huge undertaking by the team. You compare that to some of the other OEMs like Polaris and Can-Am where they will build their own vehicles but they'll still have Fox do the suspension or Walker Evans, will still have them access to their tires, things of that nature. This is essentially 100% built by Speed UTV.

(3:23) Continuing on with what are the stock features, so I talked about the horsepower, I talked about the components. So for this LE, $32,000 initial buy-in price, a couple other nice features are some high-quality beadlock wheels and some speed tires. We've been running these tires in a couple different environments so far, they're nice. I would say they are probably the highest quality tire of any stock high-performance UTV on the market. Remains to be seen, but it does appear and feel to be a higher quality version of tire. It's 32 inches tall, again made by Speed UTV, and these wheels are beadlocks which is a nice upgrade as well. Most UTVs don't come with a stock beadlock. These are fairly lightweight, I want to say they're under 18 pounds, and they are most importantly tied into the geometry of the vehicle. So they have very little offset and that keeps most of your weight over the wheel bearings. They have big oversized wheel bearings, and this car is really its special sauce, is known for having an amazing structure of suspension, chassis, and very good geometry with minimal tire scrub, minimal bump steer, all those type of things. So that is why I want to bring it up because the wheels play an important part of making all that work together to the highest performing, highest geometry standards that Speed is creating.

(4:37) Okay, so opening up the door here, cool feature also at the LE base price point are some carbon fiber seats. So this is a race style seat, what also is pretty cool for Speed UTV is that you can pick a couple different sizes, so you probably noticed the size of this seat, the two front seats set up a little bit more than the rear. That's because I opted for the tall and wide seat which is noticeably bigger and roomier than the standard seat, so a nice option that Speed customers had to pick from. You've got a nice high-quality suede steering wheel, there's a cool dash we'll talk about in a minute. You can see this big lever here which is a shift lever, which is also unique to other brands in that this vehicle can allow you to shift on the fly while you're going at speed. Most Polaris and Can-Am models, you've got to come to a complete stop to go from low to high. So most of those UTVs only have a two-speed, let's call it a low and high, where this has three speeds to choose from. It's got a first, second, and third, so first is a low, second is a medium, and third is a bit of a highway gear where you can take off here at zero miles an hour in third gear, but it's designed to keep the RPMs low and use as just a road section, or if you're on the road or on the highway, reduce belt temps, reduce fuel consumption, keep your RPMs low while you're really not driving aggressively, but just kind of on the road or right in transition sections, let's say if you're in a long ride like Arizona Peace Trail or down in Baja.

(6:02) So now we're here at the front of the car. This is pretty much what sold me on this vehicle, what I get excited about. I mentioned earlier about suspension, geometry, chassis, is really what we're supposed to be a big selling point or feature of Speed compared to Polaris, Can-Am, and the competition. And what I get excited about are the front suspension. There's a lot going on with the steering as well as all the suspension components. So the suspension components are boxed TIG welded chromoly, they're welded by robots, and this front knuckle here is all double shear, so it doesn't use ball joints like the competition. You've got a double shear upper lower section here on the knuckle as well as for the front tie rods, and then the tie rods are in the front of the A-arms versus the rear of other vehicles. And that's supposed to be better for geometry and how it all works together, like I said, to keep the geometry as good as it can be for high performance, which is noticeably engineered into race off-road vehicles. So not only do you have the steering box in the front which is better, but you have a hydraulic steering rack. So this is a hydraulic powered unit which is also the first in the UTV industry versus most of the other competition are electric. So we got some nice machine tie rods, like I said, nice high-quality mono balls, no ball joints. And then to top it all off, you've got some shocks that work very well, and you're going to see some more content of that soon if you haven't already. But these are Speed shocks, like I mentioned, and they are the biggest in the industry. They're 3.25 inches in diameter, and Robbie Gordon Speed has been known for being able to produce high-performing off-road vehicles, trophy trucks for decades, and they tout a lot of that technology went into these shocks as an internal bypass. So the shock is the same on all four corners of this vehicle, so it's a 12-inch stroke shock, 3.25-inch diameter, and they are internal bypass. They have adjustments for compression, rebound, as well as they also have an adjustable crossover ring. So all that allows you to fine-tune it, but having a bigger shock ultimately is better. As these UTVs get heavier, this is heavier than most of the competitors, this car sits at just under 2,500 pounds without any passengers in it. So as we get more high performance, you're also looking at having bigger shocks help control that ride, more passengers, more weight, more accessories, all of that. So generally speaking, bigger shocks are usually better.

(8:29) One other nice feature too, you'll notice the front sway bar and the rear sway bar have a couple of adjustments. So what Speed tried to achieve and what I've felt so far is a very nice combination of suspension plushness as well as stability, and how you have to achieve that is through your shocks, your suspension valving, also your geometry, your sway bar, because some of the competition on the market like the Can-Am, like the Polaris, uses Fox Live valve suspension. We have adjustable switches you can adjust on the fly, and what you're trying to do is have your vehicle set up for each situation. If you're going fast over rough terrain, you want a firmer setup. If you're slowing down, going slower, chattery terrain, you want maybe a softer setup, or if you're going slow on the rocks. So what Speed decided or tried to do engineering-wise is to optimize all that without going the amount of electric suspension. So light valving for the small chatter and lightweight slow speed sections, and then have a network in unison with the sway bar and with the geometry of the chassis. So in my opinion, from my early rides, I'm very pleased. I think it does all that extremely well, but it isn't adjustable on the fly like a Fox Live valve system found on a Polaris Razor or a Can-Am X3.

(9:45) So moving right here to the rear of the vehicle, one thing that you'll notice that's different than most other UTVs is the suspension design. Most Can-Am, Polaris, and other competing models, Kawasaki, Honda, all have radius rods and they're all tied to the rear hub, whereas this has a singular trailing arm style. So again, they're touting geometry, better handling, better efficiency, and then ideally in a perfect world, it's pretty ideal because you have one less component that can drag up on a rock. A lot of people have bent or broken radius rods, it's one of the natural upgrades they do to increase the longevity of the rear end. With these vehicles, they keep making them faster, tougher, we just keep driving them faster and find out where the weak points are. So that's another advantage of this design. They had to incorporate their own axle design which is double plunging axle, and it works very well. So there's a couple characteristics, as I mentioned in other videos, you can research those more if you want to learn more about it, but that's kind of an overview of how it ties together with the chassis. The chassis also has more touch points, you'll notice the roll cage has an A and an A+ pillar that goes all the way down to the bottom. This again is race car inspired, it's designed to be structurally more rigid, safer in the event of an accident, because ultimately these vehicles are going fast. I think this thing does almost 85, 86 miles an hour right now off the showroom floor, and you know, things do happen, and you want to be safe and protect you and your loved ones in the vehicles. So there's a lot more structural rigidity in terms of the placement and the arrangement of the tubes in the roll cage, which they've talked about and documented to make for a safer package if something does go wrong. And hopefully, we never have to test that on the channel.

(11:23) I want to talk about some of the upgrades I've made. First off, you'll notice a front and rear bumper right here. In the back, I have a full-size spare tire. So Speed Off-Road is a trail kit where you get a spare tire, a spare axle, a tie rod, as well as a jack of your choice. There's a couple different jack options. What's nice about it is the bigger bed keeps the tire low. This will fit up to a 35-inch tire, and then I also have a distressant box, which provides some additional storage that keeps it waterproof.

(11:51) For the storage box, so far we've only had a couple rides on it. We've got some of our basic essentials, which are belts, a tow strap, ratchet straps, and then some tools. You could fit a smaller cooler in here, you might be able to put your tie rod in here as well. I'm not sure on the axle, we'll check them, we'll follow up on another video, but it's just a nice feature that bolts right into the bed. Again, keeps all the weight low. You can see out of the rear, and mentioning keeping the weight low, that's a big advantage I feel in this car so far driving, as well as one of the design elements, was to keep the center of gravity, the CG, low, race car inspired, so the vehicle doesn't feel like the inner wheels are going to come up when you're going fast around a turn, things of that nature. And something that I found, I've communicated and talked about in a couple videos again, they're on our channel. We'll go ahead and link those in the description if you want to learn more about my early reviews on the Speed.

(12:38) So I talked about safety. One nice feature are the stock five-point harnesses that come stock. Again, race car style to keep you safe and secure if anything were to go wrong. Another accessory that I had added but we have removed recently are some window nets. So the window nets are a nice upgrade. Again, they increase safety if you have a tip over, roll over, you're keeping all of your limbs inside of the vehicle preventing a major injury for somebody's hand. But for right now, we have them removed given the type of riding we've been doing lately. We'll go back and forth, but it's a really well-designed product and fits perfectly with the roll cage here. They did a lot of accessory integration and design in this vehicle. And another accessory that I had purchased that we removed as well is the windshield. So the windshield, a lot of you guys have been asking, comes on and off very quickly. There's a screw down low, screw up here on either side, so four screws, one person, five minutes, you can get the windshield right off. So it's nice to have it. I enjoy the windshield for colder rides, keeping dust out of your eyes. I've got it removed right now because the temperatures are pretty warm outside as we get into summer.

(13:38) Another nice feature that Speed offers you can go ahead and add.

(13:42) Kind of a Chupacabra video without talking about our Chupacabra products and what we've been working on so far are what products we've been using. So these are our flagship side mirrors, these are the quail race side mirror. What's unique with this mirror, most other competitors don't have, is a mount to add some lights which you will be seeing soon, and we decided to run these on the A+ pillar along with our center mirror, which is our rearview 16-inch Super Deluxe. The Super Deluxe can be moved around and adjusted. You can see I've got mine a little offset so I can see evenly out of the rear of the vehicle. So this is the setup that I'm enjoying so far and will continue to use. There are some integration compatibility issues right now with this mirror with the window net. The window nets come all the way here to the front tube or the front A pillar, so working on a solution, but in the meantime, we have another mirror in our catalog called the Quero Pro, and those will go ahead and mount onto the window nets should you choose to want to run that option.

(14:37) So there's one other upgrade that you can't really see but I want to mention, and that is a digital bundle package. So what that entails is a bunch of wiring that's already set up on this vehicle that makes mounting accessories, plugging and installing electrical accessories very simple. So for instance, you might see our new light bar Ball Designs Onyx 20 inch. There was already a front wire or dongle ran to that position with some switches already on the dash. So very nice, you also get a belt temperature gauge and you also get tire pressure sensors. I'm a big fan of tire pressure sensors, so if I hit something hard, I know if I've got a slow leak or potentially a flat or if it's something that's in my head. But you've got some pre-wired solutions for your rear whips, a rear chase bar, a dome light, mirror lights again which you'll see soon, front lights, things of that nature. So right here, come in stock from the factory with this kit, you've got a switch already for a roof light bar, a bumper light bar like I mentioned, mirror lights, a rear auxiliary light. It comes stock with a horn as well with this kit and left and right turn signals. So that's pretty cool. Speaking of switches, there's another upgrade that I ordered which is some seat heaters. I'm a big fan of those. So you've got a master switch up here and then each seat has its own little switch, so it's nice to have your seats nice and warm when you're on a cold ride, especially if you don't have your windshield or you're just in a really cold environment. I'm a big fan of them, so that was a nice setup.

(15:59) And then one other interior accessory that I did was a PCI radio. This is an elite setup already installed from the factory with their plate. So it's nice, we're good to go, we're plug and play. Here's a couple jumper cables that you would use to run to your helmets or your headsets. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the layout right here. I'm thinking about potentially moving this down a little bit lower so I can have a GPS unit right here, and I think that would be maybe my optimal setup. These are the push-to-talk buttons that allow you to communicate to other people on other cars, but that kind of all works in unison with the dash. You see a sticker over here which is an additional remote dash that will link up to this, give the passengers some more information. So let's fire up the dash and show you some of the features of that because that's also pretty cool.

(16:42) So you got a bunch of different options to choose from. Here's the first, the second option here I like the most. You've got your tire pressure in the lower right which I enjoy having, and then you can see there's a lot of data which is pretty cool to have. You got the water tap temp and the engine oil temp. You got the front differential temperatures, the transmission temperature, of course the voltage, RPMs, got some front and rear backup cameras. Here's the rear, and here is the screen option with the front and the rear. The front's pointing pretty low for rock crawling which is cool. Here's for a future service tie-in. So a lot of cool options. You can also sync your iPhone in there and watch YouTube or link a GPS app. So that's a brief overview of the Speed UTV. If you guys are new to this vehicle, haven't heard much about it, the goal was to have this thing compete directly with the top competitors on the market, which today are the Can-Am X3, the Razor Turbo R, the Razor Pro R, and some of the others like the Kawasaki KRX. Horsepower and weight are very comparable to a Razor Pro R. So look forward to some shootout videos of those head-to-head battles on our channel. If you guys want to learn more about the vehicle and see some ride reviews, you can check out our YouTube channel. Again, one of the first people in the industry to have this, and we've been creating content for quite a while. So if there's any questions that we might not have answered, go ahead and comment below. We'll do our best to address those in the comments or in future videos. I just want to kind of give you guys an overview. Got a lot of questions with this thing out in the wild of what is it, how is it, where is it, and how does it compare there. And on the channel, we've owned and operated and even raced almost basically all brands. So I own a Can-Am as well, I've owned several Polarises and other brands. You can learn in the future, so we try to keep it as non-biased as possible here and give you guys honest feedback as we spend more time in this machine. Again, that's stuff that's already up on our channel. If you guys like the content, please like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one.

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