Re: Johnson OMC
OMC , which "owned" the U.S. o/b marine market up to the early 1990's was bought by a group led by George Soros ( corporate raiders ) back in the day when those sized companies were being bought up and probably over-leveraged and ruined as a result of it. That company also began to face some serious product problems, some as of a result of their financial condition, which led to more financial problems. The Ficht product problem was just an indicator of other things going wrong within the company. At the same time, some others, such as Yamaha Marine, were doing a lot of things, right and were not the victims of these buyout schemes. They were improving their products and therefor were improving market share and their dealer base by leaps and bounds. Many OMC dealers dropped the Johnny Rudes in favor of Yamaha so that they could have decent factory support and product quality. The current owners of the product, BRP , is making improvement to the dealer base but still has a long way to go. They are evidently producing a quality product once again.
