Here’s a baby-blue beauty, a classic old Johnson snowmobile produced by the Outboard Marine Corporation. We found this old sled parked beside a motorsports repair shop in the B.C. interior. This snub-nosed little snowmobile hails back to the golden days of snowmobiling manufacturing when there were dozens of companies making snowmobiles and snowmobile innovation was happening fast and furiously. It stands out with its unique dual headlight configuration, albeit now missing one of those lights. It almost begs for a little TLC (OK maybe more than a little TLC) and this old sled could be a collectors dream.
In the fall of 1964, Outboard Marine Corp. (OMC) of Waukegan, Ill., jumped into the fast-growing sport of snowmobiling. With three years of testing under its belt, OMC was ready to tackle the burgeoning market. The company produced three variations out of their Peterborough, Ontario, facility: the Johnson Skee-Horse, the Evinrude Skeeter and, in Canada, they changed the name of the Skeeter to Snow Cruiser.
About all that was different was the paint colour and nameplate. The Johnson Skee-Horse was green, the Evinrude Skeeter had a blue tunnel with a white hood, and Snow Cruisers came in blue.
Outboard Marine Corporation (OMC) was a maker of primarily Evinrude, Johnson and Gale Outboard Motors boat motors and many different brands of boats. However, it did produce snowmobiles under the Evinrude and Johnson brand names during late 1960’s and 1970’s.
At its height it was a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 corporation. Evinrude began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1907. OMC was based in Waukegan, Illinois. They also owned several lines of boats such as Chris Craft, Lowe Boats, Princecraft, Four Winns, SeaSwirl, Stratos, and Javelin. OMC was also a parent company to Ryan, which made lawn mowers.
OMC sold 100,000 motors in 2000 and had one third of the outboard market. OMC filed for bankruptcy on December 22, 2000 and laid off 7,000 employees.
The Johnson and Evinrude brands were won by bid in February 2001 by Bombardier Recreational Products and the boat division by Genmar Holdings of Minnesota. The former OMC plant #2 in Waukegan, Illinois is now a United States Environmental Protection Agency superfund cleanup site funded by taxpayers.
