Why Evinrude Stopped Making Outboard Engines

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dtmackey
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Why Evinrude Stopped Making Outboard Engines

Postby dtmackey » Fri May 13, 2022 4:13 pm

The failure of Evinrude (now out of business) had many contributing factors, of which the shift of consumers to four-stroke outboard engines was one factor, but not the deciding factor. Management of the business was not executed with any logic. The pricing of engines at premium prices didn't bode well either. The power options in the lower range didn't match competitors offerings.

Even the four-stroke models Evinrude offered didn't sell.

D-

jimh
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Re: Why Evinrude Stopped Making Outboard Engines

Postby jimh » Fri May 13, 2022 8:47 pm

Looking at the financials for BRP for the last year they were in the outboard engine business, the "marine" segment was only about 10-percent of the total corporate revenue. The other BRP business segments--which to boaters probably do not seem nearly as important as outboard engines--were 90-percent of their business, including snowmobiles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and non-outboard engine manufacturing.

A further problem for BRP was that in these other segments their products were the market leaders, while in outboard engines their products were far off the pace of market-leaders Mercury and Yamaha, and were being overtaken by Suzuki.

The only really bad move by corporate senior management--and here seen in retrospect--was the failure to anticipate how much growth would occur in demand for recreational boating as a result of the pandemic and the almost total elimination of recreational travel. I don't think any outboard engine maker was ANTICIPATING an enormous increase in demand for outboard engines. If some manufacturer was, then there would not be a 10-month (or longer) backlog on delivery of new outboard engines.

I am sure it was painful to pull the plug on Evinrude. But if you are not making any money operating a large workforce making a highly complex product, with a low margin of profit and declining sales and market share, perhaps it was time to face the music.

The rollout of the G2 engines was well done from a marketing and presentation perspective, but there were too many problems in the early production engines for the overall project to be considered a big success. The second wave of G2 engines were also received very quietly, and their power-to-weight ratio was declining--at a time when the fourstroke engine power-to-weight ratio was improving. The final G2 engines with in-line three-cylinders were perhaps the most attractive of all the G2 engines, but they were only on the market for few weeks before the end was announced.

jimh
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Re: Why Evinrude Stopped Making Outboard Engines

Postby jimh » Sun May 15, 2022 11:00 am

Regarding the particulars of the E-TEC G2 engines and their designs, readers are referred to a REFERENCE section article on that topic. See

Evinrude E-TEC G2 Engines
https://continuouswave.com/whaler/reference/ETECG2.html

The above articles discusses some of the unusual techniques used in the design of the E-TEC G2 engines.