The Sinking of the Outboard Marine Corp.

[rapier]

As always, there are underlying economics. Bar that, I always say ‘stick to your knitting’..don’t diversify if the product is not complementary to your base product. Lanwmowers? Chainsaws post WW11? Aqualungs? Snowmobiles? 20 Varieties of boats: all doing the same thing? Finally, don’t introduce new technology if it’s not tried and tested to death, aka. Mercury Lake X (but excluding their 3 cylinders, fuel oil supply lacking until they caught up) – Ficht was a disaster, as was early oil injection and mix 100:1 tanks, and if your competitors do it better than you, copy them and add some other value to sell.

EPA (and other regulatory / environmentally skewed bodies) was just the world saying we’ve had enough of 2-stroke pollution (for whatever reason). I use biodegradeable oils and synthetics..most weren’t around when EPA had a hissy fit. The rest of the world outside the US are still allowed to pump out conventional 2-stroke pollution, with new build motors, so they (EPA) should take congnisance.

[fleetwin]

quote reivertom:

This is the story of most of the lost manufacturing companies in the US. The EPA is culpable as much as short sided leadership.

Well yes, the ficht engines were rushed to the market to comply with the new EPA regs…I won’t blame the EPA, but the ficht engines were surely not ready for market. I don’t know when the outboard companies were advised about the new regs, seems like the other outboard companies did not want to bother with making two strokes compliant so they just went to four strokes.
Whatever issues the ETEC engines might have, no one can deny they are real easy on fuel while complying with EPA pollution regs. I’m hoping that BRP will not give up on this technology and make the necessary investments to make the engines as bullet proof as the 1974 115s were.
Again, it is just a shame that so many dealers/customers got screwed over, selling even the best Evinrude outboards will be an uphill battle for years to come.

[shoestringmariner]

quote Roj115:

Being a die-hard OMC outboard fan I will watch that documentary with great interest. I have a 2010 BRP Evinrude 150 HO eTec on my ski boat and absolutely love it. I think eTecs are the best outboards made right now. Before that, I had a ’74 Johnson 115 on my old ski boat which I sold for good money in 2015 to make way for the new ski boat with the eTec. It broke my heart to sell that old boat and motor. We got them new when I was just 14 and I lovingly maintained it and kept it in top running condition for 40 years. The people who bought it are still running it and it’s still rock solid.

If I ever let myself buy new, it’s an Etec

[fleetwin]

quote ShoestringMariner:

quote Roj115:

Being a die-hard OMC outboard fan I will watch that documentary with great interest. I have a 2010 BRP Evinrude 150 HO eTec on my ski boat and absolutely love it. I think eTecs are the best outboards made right now. Before that, I had a ’74 Johnson 115 on my old ski boat which I sold for good money in 2015 to make way for the new ski boat with the eTec. It broke my heart to sell that old boat and motor. We got them new when I was just 14 and I lovingly maintained it and kept it in top running condition for 40 years. The people who bought it are still running it and it’s still rock solid.

If I ever let myself buy new, it’s an Etec

Me too, but at today’s prices I don’t see a new boat in my future….

[fleetwin]

quote fleetwin:

quote ShoestringMariner:

quote Roj115:

Being a die-hard OMC outboard fan I will watch that documentary with great interest. I have a 2010 BRP Evinrude 150 HO eTec on my ski boat and absolutely love it. I think eTecs are the best outboards made right now. Before that, I had a ’74 Johnson 115 on my old ski boat which I sold for good money in 2015 to make way for the new ski boat with the eTec. It broke my heart to sell that old boat and motor. We got them new when I was just 14 and I lovingly maintained it and kept it in top running condition for 40 years. The people who bought it are still running it and it’s still rock solid.

If I ever let myself buy new, it’s an Etec

Me too, but at today’s prices I don’t see a new boat in my future….

For now, it would be cool if my dealer buddy would be willing to send me to service school, but it would be real hard to "catch up", a lot has changed since 1999!

[roj115]

I watched the documentary and as the documentary maker said, he did gloss over a lot of important details. From my point of view, there were a number of important factors that contributed to the failure of the company. One is that sometime in the 1980s there seemed to be a pronounced shift in the market away from outboards to I/O. And when I say this, I’m just basing it on what I saw going on around where my lakefront cabin is. Back in the 70s, just about every boat you saw had an outboard but starting somewhere in the 80s, everyone (except me) seemed to be replacing them with I/O. By the mid 90s, pretty much all of the cabin owners around me had switched to I/O and I was just about the only hold out with an outboard. (I should also point out here that everyone’s maintenance costs went way up and mine remained minimal.) At the same time, the EPA’s stricter emission standards were being phased in and most companies chose to comply by abandoning 2 stroke and switching to 4 stroke. So now outboards were losing all of the advantages that outboards had over I/O (lighter weight, more compact, less moving parts, more dependable, better power to weight ratio, way better torque and hole shot). With those advantages gone, the market shifted even more towards I/O.

Unfortunately, OMC’s I/O offerings were not the market leaders and had a reputation for being much less reliable than their competitors’ products owing to their drive train design that was much more prone to failing compared to the drive trains made by Mercruiser and Volvo Penta. In the bay where my cabin is, I think all but one cabin switched to Mercuiser. The one cabin that switched to OMC sterndrive, had way more problems with it compared to the people with the Mercruisers.

And while EPA’s stricter standards coming into effect had a definite influence on OMC’s fortunes, I don’t blame the EPA for what they did or what happened to OMC at all.Two stroke motors were an inherently dirty technology, passing so many uncombusted hydrocarbons and other pollutants something had to be done to reduce their emissions. The fact that we have ETECs and other similar technologies now is a good thing and that wouldn’t have happened were it not for the EPA forcing the industry to reduce the emissions of their outboards.

So while you had the market shifting away from outboards, OMC was not doing well trying to compete in the I/O market. And while other manufacturers were going the easy route of more or less abandoning 2 stroke and offering only 4 stroke, OMC took the rather brave gamble of trying to make 2 stroke motors that complied with the new emission standards. This gave rise to the infamous FICHT motors. As we all know, those motors have a terrible reputation. AFAIK, the failure rate on the FICHT motor powerheads were so high, OMC’s warranty replacement costs vaulted to unsustainable levels and that was the final death blow for OMC.

Luckily, BRP bought the motor division of OMC and managed to build on OMC’s attempts to make 2 stroke motors run as clean or cleaner than 4 stroke motors. And while the ETEC and the FICHT are quite different in design (one is high pressure FI and the other is low pressure), I would imagine that there were at least some elements of OMCs FICHT design that were incorporated into the ETEC but that’s just speculation on my part.

It’s so unfortunate that so many people lost their jobs and so many dealers and customers got hosed, etc. when OMC failed but it could’ve been far worse if BRP hadn’t stepped in and took over. At least now, there are still fantastic 2 stroke outboards bearing the Evinrude name still on the market and we can still get parts for older OMC made Johnsons and Evinrudes. What if no one had stepped in and the whole thing just disappeared?

[rmhxruss]

Charley Strang who was the head of OMC in the 80’s is the man that invented the stern drive at his previous employer.

[amuller]

I agree with Roj115. The decline and fall of OMC is a sad story, but it makes little sense to blame it on the USEPA. The industry had many years of notice that the hammer would fall on 2-stroke emissions. OMC sent an unreliable produce to market, and paid the price….

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