The Polaris RZR 200 Puts Kids Behind the Wheel

It is probably impractical for most parents to hand a 10-year-old the keys to a car, the way mine did. Actually, my brother was nine and I was 11 when our parents reluctantly bequeathed us a mangy Subaru GL wagon and turned us loose on the back 30. Which, don’t get me wrong, was fantastic. But not ideal, as my brother proved when he ran off the trail and into a tree, partly because he could barely see over the dashboard. But back then, if a kid wanted to get behind a steering wheel and explore the glories of slinging dirt, a derelict car was the best of the imperfect options. Because back then, we didn’t have the Polaris RZR 200 EFI, which in concept is like a car scaled for 10-year-olds. I would have mowed every lawn from Maine to Montana for this thing.

Technically, the RZR 200 is a side-by-side, meaning it’s a knobby-tired buggy. But look at the specs and the layout and it’s awfully carlike: mid-engine, electronic fuel injection, four-wheel disc brakes, independent suspension at each corner. It has two seats, a steering wheel, and an automatic transmission—a PVT, which behaves like a CVT but isn’t one, for reasons we don’t need to explore. Point is, when your kid gets in and fires up the 180-cc four-stroke, puts the transmission in forward gear, and hits the accelerator, that kid is getting the essential experience of driving. It is, according to my boys, ages 10 and 12, hugely fun. Which I confirmed by squeezing myself in and going for a drive, Donkey Kong on a go-kart. Oversteer, understeer, and the lost art of threshold braking are all there to explore. For kids and their plastic little brains, tooling around in a RZR is connecting new circuits, like learning a new language. When it’s time to head out on the road with a permit, they’ll already be fluent in the basics.

And long before that, the RZR delivers the thrill of going somewhere, of not being at the mercy of parents to take you from point A to point B. Sometimes, at our local ride spot, my kids would disappear for a bit, scoping out a trail that branched off the hub of the main riding area. I just had to tell myself: They’ll come back. And they did. Although one of those times, the elder one returned and said, “It goes 29 mph.” I didn’t ask him to find the governed top speed, but that was probably inevitable. I also didn’t tell him about keeping his gaze up beyond the front bumper, but he got a lesson about that by running off a trail into some saplings. Best to learn that one on private property at low speed, where embarrassment is the only consequence.

Learning the joys of oversteer.

Parents with younger and/or crazier offspring can set lower speed restrictions via the Polaris Ride Control app. The RZR can also be geofenced if you’re worried about your kids heading for Chickasaw County (or, conversely, some kids who aren’t yours attempting a ride off your property). There’s also a helmet-detection system that uses Bluetooth beacons to prevent the engine from starting if a helmet isn’t within range of the gauge cluster. We just used our non-Bluetooth helmets with the admonition that, duh, you wear a helmet.

Ignition key, steering wheel, brake and accelerator, even a digital tach—proper stuff for an aspiring driver stuck in fifth grade.

While the RZR does deliver driving writ small, it’s also an off-road toy, and my kids certainly tested it as such, seeing if they could catch some air and sling some dirt. Answer: affirmative. With seven inches of suspension travel front and rear, the RZR 200 is happy enough to get a little daylight under its tires. And although it’s rear-wheel-drive rather than a 4×4, the RZR’s 24-inch tires and 10 inches of ground clearance meant that the kids could follow me on my quad (a Honda 250X) and not worry about getting stuck. If I could make it though, so could they. In fact, the RZR 200 is about the size of a big ATV, meaning that it fit in the bed of my short-box Ram pickup, its 48-inch track sneaking just between the wheelwells. It’ll even fit in a van, as proven the day it arrived, in a Sprinter. It’s tidy.

The RZR 200 EFI is $6799 plus the destination charge, which varies according to the dealer’s location (expect a price tag in the mid-$7000s). And that price, you’ll observe, would buy a fine used truck or several not-so-fine ones. But in my experience, public riding areas generally frown on children driving actual cars. And even if you’ve got your own ranch, it seems preferable for a kid to learn the fundamentals of driving with a kid-sized vehicle. There’s more agency when a kid isn’t borrowing some inappropriately giant machine, but developing skills with their own vehicle.

Independent rear suspension, mid-engine layout, seven inches of travel: good stuff for kids inclined to catch air.

The RZR 200 is rated for ages 10 to 16, but many 16-year-olds would find it a tight squeeze. And besides, once a driver’s license is a possibility, most kids I know gravitate toward cars. But until that fateful day at the DMV, the RZR 200 is a shortcut to freedom and speed, stoking enthusiasm for driving when the pavement is still a long way away.