History of the Stern Drive

[Propelled Marine]

Here's an article that I enjoyed reading

history of the stern drive

[gaineso]

Good read. Just to bad Strang couldn't stay at Merc. Of course, from what I have heard Carl was a total airhole.

[Mark75H]

That article completely omits the fact that a failed market attempt was made by Johnson back around 1930. Strang's version(s) of the sterndrive and Volvo's strong marketing revived an old idea.

Strang could have stayed on with Merc beyond 1964; he left of his own accord. Strang was one of the few people who actually could deal with Kiekhaefer one on one.


The opening of the article is a little iffy, too. It is true that the highest horsepower motor produced in 1948 was the 33.4 hp Speedifour, but the speed records mentioned in the sentence just before were set with the previously produced OMC 4-60 that made something like 70hp.


Welcome to the new media ..... that just swallowed the old media whole and didn't even burp.

[David]

I had the honor of meeting Charlie Strang a few years ago. He gave me an autographed (his) copy of Ironfist. At the time his personal boats were a couple of PWC and a pontoon boat.

I wish we had the time to talk more about boats but our business that day was about cars.