Evinrude buying a boat builder

A perfect example where one might see gloom and doom, another sees opportunity.

Nothing new about it. Nearly destroyed Evinrude decades ago. Really a move I'm surprised they haven't made sooner. Yamaha owns many boat companies and Brunswick owns many. It has made it very difficult for Evinrude to get their motors on boats. Pairing engines and boats is very popular on smaller boats such as Alumacraft.

Interesting too since CBC manufactured boats for a while and then stopped doing so.

You've got to assume it's just the first with more to come. We'd have been much better off if no engine manufacturers had ever owned boat companies. Now, I guess they feel they must.

I pull from an old Yamaha annual report, their objective:

To achieve further growth, we will reposition the business from being an engine supplier to being a system supplier
​

The sad thing is Evinrudes only last 3 or 4 years and are covered by their 5 year warranty.

They don't have to be serviced for 5 years, they tell you at the Boat Shows. Would you get on an airplane that hadn't been serviced for 5 year? Me neither.

You see skips and trash-piles full of new-ish ones in most boatyards.

We've seen this all before. OMC vs. Mercury, then Genmar. Then Brunsick acquires more brands and Yamaha acquires brands. Now BRP. I think BRP finally figured out that couldn't be a major player in outboards if they didn't own some boat brands. I think this is just the start.

I don't think they (BRP) can ever be a big player in the outboard game as they're still producing junky direct injection 2 strokes that put OMC out of business in the first place. The entire design of the motor is not good. Several major flaws. They run the direct injection at an incredibly high psi (around 900 I believe). None of the fuel injectors are equal, and can't be at that psi, so everytime you change 1 fuel injector you have to program the computer to accept that injectors individual flow volumes and nonsense. It's almost impossible to get fuel (gas) injectors to meter fuel properly at all rpm's at those fuel pressures. The next issue is the engine has no 2 stroke oil reservoir on the motor, so the instant their is an oil delivery problem such as a pump that goes bad or even a kinked line, and you're at higher rpm's, the motor gets fried by lack of lube oil before you can even react to the alarm. I watched a brand new one with 16 hours fry itself this way. Nobody wants 2 stroke DI anymore, yet they've failed to design any 4 strokes. It's old technology that wasn't great technology when it was introduced 2 decades ago, and nobody wants it. Brunswick has 40% of the outboard market share, Yamaha 30%, then Suzuki and Honda, then BRP. The only place they fit in, is where weight is really critical.

Capt J
Thanks for the comments on Evinrudes. I have wondered if they were worth considering for a repower -- they offer a really long warranty which theoretically shows a lot of trust in the reliability of the motors. Your comments on the technical shortcomings of the 2-stroke design are illuminating. Any comments on Verado vs. Yamaha/Suzuki?

In a repower you really can't go wrong with Suzuki between ease of installation and price. I'd say Verado and Yamaha are a slight step better. But then there's all of the electrical stuff to install and deal with. Both Verado and Yamaha are good, some models in each line up better than the other......depends on the HP.