Robert McCulloch, McCulloch outboards

[Bunker Hill]

Havasu began as a simple real estate swindle...
Unlike florida swampland, Havasu has become a fairly successfel town!

[Ron Hill]

I was in the Paris (France) Hilton Hotel Bar (We were racing the Six Hours of Paris the next day)... Bob Sr., Bob Jr. and C.V. Wood came in and said they'd just bought the London Bridge for like 2 million dollars...and they were going to move it to Havasu...and any left over pieces would be sold to tourists...They figured they'd get their 2 million back from selling pieces of the London Bridge...

I told them, "You dumb Jackasses, I'd have sold you the Effiel Tour for a million..."

Many insiders always called Havasu "THE LAND SWINDLE"....it is quite a city today and no reason to believe it won't continue to grow...When they first brought the bridge to Havasu, each piece was numbered like a big puzzle...and the bridge was black as black can be, not like it is today!!!!

[Miss BK]

Havasu began as a simple real estate swindle...
Unlike florida swampland, Havasu has become a fairly successfel town!

I find it strange that the city of Havasu didn't boom until after McCulloch's death, when all the expensive promotions for the city mostly stopped. Odd, isn't it?

Also - the "London Bridge" is actually "Tower Bridge". But soon after it came over, everyone kept calling it "London Bridge". Who's going to know the difference? lol

I saw the bridge when it was first brought over --- thousands of grey rock blocks laying in giant piles. Each block was numbered and the bridge was built like a giant Lego puzzle. Incredible project. They assembled it on dry land - then dug out a channel underneath it.

In 1972, we drove down from Kingman to see Tom Jones film a music special in Havasu, dedicating the opening of the bridge and village. The featured guests on the show were The Carpenters, Elliot Gould, Jennifer ONeil, Kirk Douglas (as a cowboy in Oatman) and lots of others. We saw Tom dance and sing with his dancers on the bridge, but didn't see anyone else. The Carpenter's show was sold out.

Watching this video you can see The Carpenters standing on the now famous "Sand Bar", long before it turned into a party place.

I just have a hunch McCulloch had something to do with this TV show promoting Havasu:

Clip:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v377317263aAay9

More info:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309806/

[Roy Hodges]

I was told, by Jack Biagio ,who, at the time was a McCulloch dealer in Napa, Calif.
that the reason Bob went out of the outboard motor manufacturing business was that when he came out with the 75 horse model he said "the world will never NEED a bigger motor. ". And he fired his engineers ,not being needed. Then ,as his motors got left in the dust, he saw sales plummet . I suspect this is partly or mostly true .

[russhill]

Roy,

What you say may be true--that he didn't see the market for larger engines, BUT, the story is a little more complex, involving Sears, Roebuck & Co. I won't tell it here

Russ Hill

[Roy Hodges]

Roy,

What you say may be true--that he didn't see the market for larger engines, BUT, the story is a little more complex, involving Sears, Roebuck & Co. I won't tell it here

Russ Hill

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I think I can imagine a very involved (& SINISTER ? ) story here . I would be prepared to believe most anything I might hear.

[Skoontz]

Ok, skimming through what I knew of Sears (they are a Chicago company and we had numerous exectives of theirs dock at the boathouse) lemme ask Russ this one...You might know, well, you Russ probably know...

Sears used to play a game with their vendors to diverisfy their portfolio. They would give a vendor a contract, and lets say in this case it was McCulloch. Then they would keep adding orders until their demand far surpassed the 10% comfort zone in which most good managers will look to add more diversity in their customer base....I.E., no one customer should produce more than 10% of the gross revenue base.

Things are looking good for the vendor through the contract with Sears, so they send in the team from aquisition to offer to buy the vendor. Now the vendor decides no way, things are good, why sell, not keeping in mind the loans for expansion they took out when Sears gave them the contract...... So, should they choose not to sell to Sears, Sears then either cancels the vendors contract or simply lets it expire.

Was I even close Russ, cause it sounds like that's what happened....

Add, I know through personal experience with the chain saw division, they at one time, owned that market...Then they decided to take on the mass market and design based off price first, to the quality that price allowed... Thier saws went to crap in a year or so, and they lost their market share...Same thing happened to Homelite 10 years later.

[Ron Hill]

Cool deal, really....Boat X-1 is Ted May.....Whenever anyone had a CAMERA, TED MAY was the first one there... Great SHOWMAN.....and great ambassadore for boat racing world wide. Ted was the first one to drive a race boat under the Londo Bridge, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

[Lesterp]

That was really a good biography on Bob McCulloch. I had the privilege of knowing him. His office was a few miles down the freeway from my office. Of course, his office was on the top floor of the McCulloch Building and mine was in the basement of Mattel Toys.

The first Havasu Classic was called the "World Championships." I was APBA Region Chairman at the time and so I met with him in his office (you know the one on the top floor of the McCulloch Building) and told him he couldn't call his race the "World Championships" if it weren't UIM sanctioned. He said, "OK, sanction it." I said, "OK." From then on it was the "UIM World Championships."

I had one slight disagreement with the biography. It said he bought 11 Lockheed Electras (Turboprops). I believe they were Lockheed "Constellations," the four piston engined, triple tail models. They often parked one at the Long Beach Airport. I saw it every time I went by. It was used for taking potential real estate customers to Lake Havasu City.

My wife, Carolyn, was a hostess on some of those flights. One cleaver thing they did, when the weather was bad in Havasu, the flights were cancelled for mechanical reason--you know, passenger safety come first.

Russ Hill

Kind of right. The Constellations were the first planes, the Electras came later.