2012. The whole (wonderful) history of outboard motors

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. We begin with one of the stories we were most passionate about.

Out of time but with style

From Boats by Motor 2012, no.7, August, pp. 72-79.

A journey back more than a hundred years, when the first outboards appeared. Often unreliable, they were also noisy, polluting and thirsty for gasoline. Beautiful, though!

The fascination with “old” or, to put it more trendily, “vintage” is depopulating. And not only among the more mature generations who perhaps want to preserve memories of their youth, but younger people are also showing interest in “modern antiques,” be these watches, historic cars or vinyl records. Boating, and motor boating in particular, comes good last in all this, only the old wooden Rivas make classic enthusiasts dream, and already the later fiberglass models, just as fascinating, do not arouse the slightest excitement, just look at the difference in prices between an Aquarama and a Saint Tropez, two icons of Riva shipyards. All the more penalized are those objects where technology has decreed their inevitable oblivion. Certainly engines come first in this ranking, and even outboards are not saved.

Too bad to forget them

A real shame! One would be inclined to exclaim, although then going around the small docks one still discovers a fair number of them clinging to the sterns of boats that, judging by their general condition, have not seen the open sea (or lake) for a while. But in this case it is not collecting; it is pure scrap metal. If anything, it is serious that no one can think of salvaging them to restore them to their former glory, or even just to their former functionality to become the proper complement to a vintage hull. Here we come back to the opening remarks: the lack of historical culture in powerboating. Already in sailing it is different, and I remember the timid attempts in the first vintage boat rallies to create a space for motor yachts as well. There is no shortage of tradition: from the Bagliettos to the Benettis, as well as the aforementioned Rivas, and yet the (few) boats present were looked down upon with snooty condescension by the sailors, unsurpassed in their “pussy” conceit of feeling themselves the repositories of everything that floats. And then here was this avalanche of vintage photos to remind us that motorboating, too, has a centuries-old history (the first experiments with outboards were between 1903 and 1905), but also its myths, perhaps less coveted and famous than an Aston Martin or a Ferrari, but certainly full of charm. One only has to look at the chrome plating of an Evinrude Elto from the 1930s or a Mercury Mark 75 from the 1950s to immediately fall in love with it: the former with its mechanics almost all exposed, the latter with its wraparound grille.

Seeing them again at the stern of a boat is only imaginable at a gathering, the two-stroke technology with penal-code percentages of combusted oil (for current legislation) recommend moderate use, at least as much as the delicacy of the mechanics and, I imagine, the difficulty of finding any spare parts. In fact, if with historic cars almost everything has been rebuilt by now, one would have to swear that with outboards one would have to rely on the craftsmanship of artisans who are able to rebuild the damaged parts, and who knows at what cost. But the beauty of these objects is such that I spark a provocation: why not in the living room: If the Motom of his grandfather’s (and he is admired) or Giò Pomodoro’s sculpture (already less understood) why couldn’t a be outboard all chrome: it is excessive, maybe not, but certainly admiring these models makes one want to recover them and bring them back to life, perhaps to show them off on some specific occasions and then replace them with newer models when conditions of use require greater reliability, but also lower fuel consumption and an ever dutiful attention to the environment. Respect for their age and history dictates that they should be matched with hulls that can be their natural complement. A Boston Whaler, even a newer one, may be the ideal partner, but many new Yankee-school powerboats with a somewhat retro taste can also fit. Of course, the best would be the combination with a hull of the same period.

Early twentieth century: Made in USA dominates, then come the Japanese and Italians

The story goes that the first outboard, in the sense of an external propulsion system for boats, was hypothesized by the experiments of one Cameron Waterman, a young engineering student at Yale, it was he who made an engine, it is said, with four strokes: the year of the patent was placed between 1903 and 1905. Production waited a while, 1907 to be precise, with a couple of dozen models built, and then continued for another five years at a somewhat faster pace. Accounts of the period are sketchy, however, so much so that the creation of the first real, efficient, marketable outboard is attributed to Norwegian-born American Ole Evinrude, who built thousands of engines between 1909 and 1912, achieving considerable success with the 3 hp model. The Evinrude Outboards Co. was later sold and Ole Evinrude continued the business with another company called Elto.

If the first steps in the history of outboards are all “made in the U.S.,” to see competitors worthy of the name we have to wait until after World War II, and they also speak Italian, for example with the Selva brand that in the 1950s immediately stood out for its high-performance and reliable products. It is from Japan, however, that the main competitors of the American brands arrive, because there are the giants of the motor industry there, who see in the outboard a natural emanation of their excellence in motoring on two and four wheels: Yamaha, Suzuki and Honda soon make the full weight of their technology felt, and the challenge is thrown down. Calanders become more and more aerodynamic, and underneath, the concentration of technology grows exponentially. But the look of an Elto or the chrome of a Mercury has a charm that all the power packs and lavishly lavished horsepower of current models cannot even imagine.

by Alberto Mondinelli

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