4

Building a Better Motor

One problem with making your living from boats is that it is a seasonal business. It is much better at certain times of the year than others. In some parts of the United States, including Wisconsin, there are a few months when it is too cold to use boats and the lakes are covered in ice. Ole and Bess had to find a way to deal with the fact that sales were going to slow down during the winter. It was Bess who came up with a solution to this problem. She began to contact export companies in New York to see if it might be possible to start selling Evinrude outboard motors outside of the United States.

Most of the companies Bess contacted ignored her letters. But one agent saw that the motors might prove to be popular among Scandinavian (scan di nay vee uhn) fishermen. Scandinavia is the part of northern Europe that includes the countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. This agent ordered a small number of motors to be demonstrated in those 3 countries. The agent was right. Evinrude outboard motors were a big hit in Scandinavia. His demonstration quickly resulted in an order for 1,000 motors.

In 1912 the company sold 4,650 motors, doubling its yearly total once again. The company moved again, too, into an even bigger space, this time on Walker Street. But even this new factory proved to be too small. The next year, 1913, sales doubled yet again, reaching 9,412 motors. About 300 employees worked in the newest factory. By this time, the name Evinrude was becoming well known among boating fans all over the world. Ole managed the Evinrude factory and served as its chief engineer. Bess was in charge of the company’s advertising and public relations. She generally kept the office running smoothly. The company was zooming along, but the long hours were again beginning to wear Ole and Bess down. They hadn’t had a vacation in 4 years. Bess had never recovered her full strength after her son’s birth. She began to suffer from some health problems. And she and Ole didn’t have nearly enough time to spend with Ralph, who was now 6 years old.

Ole liked to test his inventions himself. Here he is on the lake with a newly designed engine.

With the business going well, Ole and Bess decided that it didn’t need them anymore. In 1914 Ole sold his half of the Evinrude Detachable Row Boat Motor Company to his partner, Chris Meyer, for $137,500. That may sound like a lot of money now, but in 1914 it was worth quite a lot more! It would take about $2.5 million today to buy as much stuff as $137,500 could buy in 1914. As part of the deal, Ole agreed to stay out of the outboard motor business for the next 5 years.

Employees of the Evinrude factory, 1916.

Now free to spend their time as they pleased, the Evinrude family started a new life of leisure. They bought a Packard touring car and loaded it with lots of outdoor sports equipment. After years of working harder than was good for them, the Evinrudes set out to explore America. They travelled for a while by land, and then the Evinrudes went south. They bought a cabin cruiser and started exploring the Florida coast by sea. Six months later, the family returned to Milwaukee, where they toured the Great Lakes on a 42-foot cruiser designed by Ole called the Bess Emily. When they’d had enough of the Great Lakes, they cruised down the Mississippi River in the fall of 1917 to spend the winter in New Orleans, Louisiana. Gradually, all of this relaxation helped both Bess and Ole regain their health and strength. By the time they reached New Orleans, Ole had gotten an idea for a new and improved version of his outboard motor. He decided that he’d had quite enough of a rest. Ole was ready to get back to work.

The Evinrudes traveled America in a Packard touring car something like this one.

Meanwhile, Ole’s old company was struggling under Chris Meyer’s leadership. The company had made a few minor improvements in the design of the Evinrude outboard motor, but each year they were selling fewer of them. From the 9,412 motors the company sold under Ole and Bess in 1913, sales dropped to 7,180 in 1914, 6,222 in 1915, and 5,534 in 1917. Despite these shrinking numbers, Evinrude remained the world’s leading outboard motor producer.

During this period, Ole could not go back into the outboard motor business because of his agreement with Meyer. But that did not stop him from thinking about outboard motors. By 1919, the end of his agreement, Ole had come up with a revolutionary new design. Ole’s new motor was made largely of aluminum (uh loo mi nuhm). Aluminum is much lighter than the bronze, steel, and iron used in the Evinrude engine. The new motor weighed only 42 pounds. It was also about 50 percent more powerful than the earlier Evinrude model.

Evinrude also made round bottom boats like these in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

With plans for his new engine in hand, Ole visited Meyer. He wanted to discuss working with his old company to produce the new motor. To Ole’s surprise, Meyer was not interested. He was still making money from the old engine, and he saw no reason to form a new partnership. Ole, however, was certain that the new engine was much better than the old one. He decided to start his own company. His new company would compete directly with the company that had his name.

Elto motors weighed less than earlier models. The company thought this would be more appealing to women.

So in 1920, Ole and Bess started a new company from scratch. They could not use their own name, Evinrude, for the new company’s name, because Meyer alone owned the right to use it for business. They settled on the name Elto Outboard Motor Company. Bess came up with the name Elto by combining the first letters of the phrase Evinrude Light Twin Outboard. With about $35,000 in savings, they rented shop space, bought some used equipment, and went to work producing the Elto motor. As before, Ole ran the shop while Bess managed the office.

This catalog cover talks about the motor’s speed, but the boat does not look like it’s going fast enough to mess up the passengers’ hair!

By the time the Elto company was formed, there was a lot more competition in the outboard motor business. As a result, Elto lost money in its first year. But slowly the company grew more successful. In 1921, Ole and Bess sold about 1,000 Elto motors. The following year, the number of motors sold reached 2,500. That was more than the old Evinrude company managed to sell that year. In 1922, Chris Meyer sold the Evinrude company.

By this time, however, another company had jumped into the lead in the outboard motor industry. The Johnson Motor Company, based in South Bend, Indiana, had begun making motors that performed better than the old Evinrudes. The biggest Evinrude and Elto motors in 1926 were 4 horsepower. Horsepower is the unit of measurement used to describe how powerful a machine is. Johnson’s motor was 6 horsepower and getting more powerful every year. Around this time, boat racing was becoming a popular sport. Johnson was the first company to give racing customers faster, more powerful motors.

What Is Horsepower?

You’ve probably heard the word horsepower before. Most ads for cars, lawn mowers, and motorcycles tell you about the machine’s horsepower. Horsepower is a way of measuring the power of an engine. The word was created by engineer James Watt in the 1700s. He wanted a way to talk about the power available from horses lifting coal from a coal mine. One horsepower is equal to one horse moving 330 pounds of coal 100 feet in one minute. This unit of measure made its way down through the centuries and is now used to show how much work a machine can accomplish or how fast it can accelerate.

But Ole worked hard to keep up with Johnson, and the Elto company prospered. He spent a lot of money on advertising and managed to sell about 7,600 Elto motors by 1925. Johnson was the only company that sold more. In 1926, Elto introduced a new 2-cylinder motor (remember, the cylinders in a motor are the chambers in which the fuel is burned) called the Super Elto Twin. It proved to be quite popular. Not to be outdone, the Johnson company kept building faster and more powerful motors. These motors set new world speed records in 1925 and 1926. Ole fought back with the first 4-cylinder outboard motor ever offered, the 92–pound, 18-horsepower Elto High Speed Quad. The Quad sold for $275. It was the first in a string of 4-cylinder motors that would grow in power over the next several years, reaching 40 horsepower in 1930 and peaking at 50 horsepower in 1946. Outboard racing was becoming a popular spectator sport in some parts of the country, including the Midwest, in the late 1920s. The Quad was the engine of choice for many top racers. In 1928, the year the Quad was launched, Elto sold more than 10,000 motors and made more than $300,000.

A 1929 Elto catalog.

The 1929 Elto Quad was the first 4-cylinder outboard motor.