Trivia tidbits

Outboard Wars

Carl Kiekhaefer considered OMC a hated enemy. With a 30-year head start on Mercury, OMC’s Johnson and Evinrude had secured the best dealers with exclusive contracts. After the end of World War II, Keikhaefer declared another war — on OMC.

In 1950 Mercury set out to debunk the “OMC myth” that Ole Evinrude had invented the outboard motor. Kiekhaefer tracked down 73-year-old Cameron Waterman, brought him to the New York Boat Show, and with much media fanfare, arranged for him to be honored as the outboard motor’s true inventor.

OMC allegedly hit back in the mid-1950s by organizing a smear campaign, coining the slogan, “Mercurys are fast, but won’t last.” Supposedly, dealers were told to spread stories that Mercurys required special fuel, oil, tools, and highly trained mechanics to stay running. Or that Kiekhaefer was broke or crazy. Or that “Mercurys are built in a barn, if you don’t believe it, remove a spark plug and smell it.” Everyone had heard the rumors, but no one knew where they came from.

This drove Kiekhaefer up a wall and at annual dealer meetings he’d hang an OMC engine over a bonfire. He would personally light it and then lower the outboard into the roaring flames, exhorting his troops as the “enemy’s” motor was reduced to a glob of molten aluminum. Maybe he was crazy after all.



Who Knew?

What color was the first Mercury?

Dark green.

Who built the first stock boat spe<>cifically designed for outboards?

Penn Yan, in 1928.

What year did Sears first offer a mail-order outboard?

The Motorgo first appeared in 1913.

Who owned the nascar team that won 80 percent of the stock car events it entered in 1956?

Carl Kiekhaefer, owner of Mercury, raced Chrysler 300s and dominated the circuits.

Who first offered shifting gears?

Johnson and Scott-Atwater, in 1949.

Which company built the first four-cylinder outboard motor?

Elto, in 1928.

Name the manufacturer that built Lawn-Boy lawn mowers.

Evinrude in 1932, and it remained part of OMC until 1989.

Who built the first production V-4 outboard motor?

Evinrude, in 1958.




I especially like the part about Mercuys are built in abarn, if you don't beleive me, remove the spark plugs and smell!!! LOLOL

NOW and ONLY NOW do I know where exactly my haterd for Merc products came from. We were an Evinrude dealership, and all this crap came out about the time I was born in 1957....

That's the year i bought my first outboard motor . A mk 55e. boy was i sick, about a month after buying it, the Mk 58 came out , for the same price . No comparison in performance .

Roy:

The thing we used to say alot which still holds true today, is that Mercury changed their products like the weather. They were hard to work on, they were hard to get parts for. The Merc dealer would have engines on boats sitting all summer waiting for parts when our OMC's went in and left to run.

They were fast, they just did not last. I later coined the phase "Merc jerks" but John Janaky got ticked at me when he originally was setting his Molinari up with one before he got his V-6 Johnson so, I stopped. We used to have alot of fun ribbing one another, one motor owner to the next that is....

My buddy , (merc mack) was an omc fan, i was a merc guy . Both teen agers . He was "whispering power" , I was "roaring speed". Now, we are opposits. him a merc guy, me a omc guy . He is also a sort of Chrysler fan.

If ya don't drive an OMC, you ain't got no Johnson.....:):):)

Bill - Nice thread. I always liked OMC outboards. My first outboard was a 3 hp Johnson at age 4. That thing never gave up. My dad got tired of buying shear pins and gave me a coffee can of cut off roofing nails to use instead.:D I worked for OMC dealers when I was young and went to many of their service schools in wisconsin. Always thought it was cool walking down the hall to class and going past all the motors lined up in the hallway. We always wanted to smuggle out the Rotory and V-8 on display. Then I had a chance to work at Douglas marine rigging the Skaters. I never forgot my first ride in a 24' twin Merc. bidgeport Skater. Those V-6's howled down the shores of Lake Michigan at 104 MPH and my soul loyalty to OMC was shattered. I think they both made some awsome motors but I still like the way you show your loyalty. :cool:

Thanks Tom. I'm telling you, stumbing onto the trivia on the net, it is all clear how I became an OMC loyalist. This stuff the was spewed was what dad and grandpa repeated over and over again. So, at the tender age of 2, I would identify the motors on the boats driving by. Billy, what's that? Umnnnn, Sod-a-water-----JUNK! Dad says good boy. The next one rides by, a Yellow Jacket powered with a Homelite. What's that Billy, Umnnnn Dad, me think it's a Homo-mo. What is that Billy? JUNK! Good boy. A Powercat with twin Mk58's on the back screams by. Billy, what's that???? Umnnn Dad, Him's a Merc Jerk, Excellent job, son, says dad. Then the spark plug joke comes out. A Merc would pay to launch, this time I was collecting at the age of 6. I actually asked the Merc owners what smelled, when they said nothing, told them to remove a spark plug and smell. They would get towed in, I would tell them we had a brand new Evinrude 90 or 100-s that could fix their problem right away....

I got my first engine at the age of 3, a 1936 Evinrude Elto that still starts in 3 pulls. It was hooked upo to a 10' Switzer boat called Skoontz, because that's what I told the Merc owners the Evinrudes would do to them in a race. The O's had two eyeballs painted in the middle, right at the waterline in the white stripe of the two tone Switzer paint job.

We went to service school every winter. After dad talked to Mr. Epple, and he will always be Mr. Epple to me because that was the respect that was instilled in me as a kid, dad and I got the priviledge of seeing one of the rotories dissambled once. I learned fast that Rotory power would rock the world and then saw it would never come to fruition. 8 moving parts vs 36 moving parts in a piston engine, three hits per trulquiod housing/rotor combo per revolution vs one per pistion, 4 stacks vs 6 holes/pistons..... 12 hits per revolution....And an ungodly flow of power from a dead idle to 10K....

Imagine for one minute how bad OMC would have destroyed Merc had they spent the same amount of money in thier racing program as Merc did....
Anyhow, born bread and raised an OMC guy.

What would it be without the ribbing????

They Called It What?”

Odd names and odder histories

• Aquabug: A micro-horsepower kicker with interchangeable gas or electric powerheads.

• Chris-Craft: Yep, Chris-Craft built engines from 1949 to 1953 to power its smaller boats.

• Evenride: A ripoff of you-know-who that quickly died in the 1960s.

• Fageol: Not a pasta, but a small four-stroke car engine with a beefed-up Scott-Atwater lower unit.

• Fussomatic: A goofy one-off built for Mercury to show the worst features of other brands.

• Gopher: A motor produced by a professor and his students in the 1920s.

• Harley Davidson: Experimented around 1920 but sold none.

• Lionel: From the company that gave us toy trains.

• Nip-N-Tuck: Matched set of electric trolling motors, one for each side of your canoe.

• Ro-No-Mo: Like the No-Ro, Motorow, and Row-No-More. Who needs oars?

• Submerged: A 1906 electric outboard that predicted gas engines were a fad. It soon sank.

• Ted Williams: Sold through Sears in the 1960s in an attempt to capitalize on his angling exploits.

• Walnut: Died before Evinrude made outboards popular. Could have been a contender. Nuts!

Doing Its Part

By the time production of recreational outboards was formally halted in February 1942, most builders were already doing other work for the military. Germans, however, were proving the value of outboard-powered boats to ferry troops over rivers, and America soon followed. Outboards were used to move pontoon bridges, and 300,000 Allied troops were ferried over the Rhine by outboards in just 24 hours. Outboards of up to 50 hp—huge for the day—were used for reconnaissance. The Navy developed a rescue kit with an inflatable boat and an outboard that could be dropped to downed fliers. It was responsible for saving 700 airmen.