Re: [OMC-Boats] MODEL#

Since Jeff's boat is fairly early (1964) I'm wondering if he Typo'ed
> the serial # is w16738

Perhaps in reality it should be:

WI-6738

I wonder if the "WI" stood for Waukegan, IL ??

If you do some simple WAG estimates (and these are just unverified
guesses) here's my purely speculative table:

Annual production runs for OMC (Johnson/Evinrude) Boats probably looked
something like this:

1962 - 500 boats (probably optimistically high) (17 OMC brand only)
1963 - 2000 boats (17 OMC brand only)
1964 - 3500 boats (could be a little low) Evinrude & Johnson brands - 16
ft hull intoduced
1965 - 6500 boats 14, 16, 17
1966 - 7000 boats 14, 16, 17, 19
1967 - 7000 boats 14, 16, 19
1968 - 6000 boats 14, 16, 19
1969 - 4000 boats 16, 19
1970 - 2000 boats 16, 19 (probably optimistically high, as well)

The specifics again are just a guess and trying to map where Hull serial
numbers actually fell. But I'll bet the general shape of the curve isn't
to far off. The boat production peak had to fall around 1966 when all
four hulls, 14, 16 , 17 and 19 footers were all in production. In 8+
years of boat production, OMC averaged a little over 4800 boats per
year. It's guess, but I suspect Johnson sales edged out Evinrude by a
slim margin.

Remember these are purely guesses on my part, arrived at by an rather
unstatistical analysis of Hull serial numbers. Who knows, OMC may NOT
have used a sequential system and may have had "false" blocks of new
numbers every year.

I've got to get out for one last boat ride this season. C YA!

Lee Shuster

-----Original Message-----
From: omc-boats-bounces@...
[mailto:omc-boats-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Phil Budne
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 10:16 AM
To: omc-boats@...
Subject: Re: [OMC-Boats] MODEL#

Jeff Dood wrote:

> i have a johnson deluxe
>
> the model # is HU-12a
> the serial # is w16738

As Lee pointed out, the model number is an outdrive model number.
Serial numbers are usually WI-nnnn, and seem to have been assigned
sequentially. When someone sends me photos and the serial number (most
often for the boat, and not the outdrive), I include it as a note on the
web page.

The highest boat serial I've seen is for a 1970 Johnson Reveler:
WI-38547 so looking at all the serials might give us an idea of how many
boats were made, and in what years.

phil
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Received on Friday, 5 September 2008