JIM JOLLIFFE

JIM JOLLIFFE

Jim Jolliffe

DATE OF INDUCTION:
January 18, 2001
COMPETITION TYPE:
CAREER SPAN:
1966-
BRANDS RACED:
AGE AT INDUCTION:
68

Jolliffe’s first experiences with the sport trace back to the pioneering days of riding his steel cleated machine on the icy roadsides and lakes of early snowmobiling. A specialty machinist with an eye always looking for mechanical solutions, Jolliffe reasoned the dangerous sideways drift that was part of those early experiences could be conquered. A few days later, he held in his hand an invention that would change snowmobiling forever, the track stud.

He called his invention the cat claw. He built machines in his Grand Rapids, Michigan shop to stamp them out by the thousands. Jim was a visionary fabricator who found a way to make many other performance improvements on the early sleds. His talents led him to a relationship with 1988 Hall of Fame inductee Jim Adema. In 1972 the two Jims turned the racing world upside down competing with a fleet of fast Sno*Jets equipped with some of the very first studs and carbides used in oval racing.

In his 35 year career in snowmobiling, Jolliffe distinguished himself as an innovator and machinist making high-performance parts like precision sprockets, titanium fabrications and breakthrough assemblies like his Micro Engineering Billet Clutch for countless snowmobile racers, tuners and manufacturers.