 Yankee Chapter: Making Waves With Old Outboards |
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Periodically we will feature a certain make of outboard on the Yankee Chapter home page. Our current Feature Company: Lockwood-Ash, was selected simply because we had good clean graphics and have recently been tinkering with one! Lockwood-Ash
The Jackson Michigan based Lockwood-Ash produced their first outboard in 1914. Single cylinder rowboat motors like the one pictured were “state of the art” in the teens and early twenties. By the mid 1920’s the two cylinder "model T" came on the scene and enjoyed some real sales success. In the late 1920’s, Lockwood’s Ace and Chief were pretty potent outboards and enjoyed success on the outboard racing circuit. Lockwood also was an early entry into the “badge engineered” or “private brand” business supplying Sears & Roebuck with Motorgo outboards for many years. (Other famous brands Caille and Neptune also offered outboards to Sears for resale under the Motorgo name.) Despite Lockwood’s success, the company ended up merging with Evinrude/Elto in late 1929. Many people say that Evinrude purchased the company just to get the now famous engineer Finn T. Irgens to work for them! Evinrude stopped production in Michigan but some tooling, engineering ideas and employees found their way to Milwaukee. After a very short period, no doubt due to the great depression, the Lockwood name was dropped entirely. Today Lockwood outboards enjoy a nice following with members of the AOMCI. They are not the rarest of old outboards or the most common. Like many motors from the time, eighty years of use and abuse can lead to broken castings and dented gas tanks. The Eisemann coils and condensers in the magneto seem to have a high failure rate and the “slip clutch” on the propeller of the “T” series can be troublesome. Have an old outboard you would like to see featured? Simply write up a small description and send us two clear graphics (the one for the home page must be formatted portrait) and it can be included here! Please send comments and ideas to the "Contact Us" link on the bottom of the page.
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