How Many Swift Hydros?

[DeanFHobart]

Does any one know how many hydros Joe Swift built? I have heard it was in the thousands. And, that he actually had a production line going.

Did he ever build any runabouts?

Thanks,

Dean Hobart.......

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

According to the author of "A Century of Outboard Racing" approximately 9000 Swift hydros were built over a 15 year period. Joe Swift also sold plans according to this information. No mention is made of any runabouts built in his shop in Florida.

The author does not quote any source for this number but he does say a boat racer named Hagood purchased the first one for approximately 190.00. I seem to remember seeing a picture somewhere showing the inside of the Swift shop and it was quite large (i.e. production line) with lots of boats in the picture.

I purchased a "Big Bee" from a Mercury dealer in about 1955, finished complete with all hardware ready to race, frt from Florida included, for about 400.00. The author of this book gives as one of the main reasons for the sales success for these boats (and also the success of Stock Outboard racing at the time) as the availability of a complete motor/boat package available from one source (Mercury dealers) ready to go racing.

[Ed Hatch]

The numbers just don't make any sense. 9000 hydros over 15 years, 600 per year? Unless people back in the day got a new boat every year after a few years there would be 1200 then 1800, 2400 etc etc in circulation. I think the truth lies in the fact that Joe Swift built a large number of boats for the war effort, World War II production plus post war hydros makes more sense. What year did Swift stop production???

[Mark75H]

I think the number is accurate. Racing membership was at its peak, much greater than any other time. Not all Swifts went into APBA racing, maybe a third went to cottage lakes.

1,000 per year in the heyday sounds reasonable to me

[Tim Chance]

In the early 1970's Clyde Queen (Outboard Club of Chicago) told me that he had first hand information that when Joe Swift went corporate with Mercury Outboards that there was a warehouse full of Swift Hydros: Big Bee, Atomic A, Big D; somewhere and he wanted to find it.

I do know that in 1962 I was at a race in Florida and Ted Thompson and Ronnie Messinger has prototypes of the New Swift hydros. And I also know Cliff Johannsen bought two and I don't know if anybody else bought any and then Joe Swift went OPC and the last time I saw Joe was in the 80's.

But my guess is: thousands of racing hydros. Not bad for a close pin company.

One more thing - Talking to Nick Marchetti once he told me that at his peak he and his son Pat could build one boat at week. Four a month. One on the jig upsidedown. One right sideup. One getting finished and the last getting painted.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

As Sam stated in a couple of post above, the 9000 figure does seem to be correct, at least based on written information about the History of Boat Racing that covers this time frame.

Several other books, "Iron Fist" which should need no further introduction on this site, has half a dozen mentions of Joe Swift in its pages. He evidently had a close relationship with Kiekhaefer, as when he decided to close his boat shop in Mt. Dora, Fl., in 1967 he went to work for Mercury in Carl's "inner circle" as a PR man for him. It states in the book that same figure of 9000 boats from about 1950 until 1967 when he went to work for Mercury.

Another book that has information about Swift is titled the "Golden Age of the Racing Outboard". It has a quite lengthy section on both boats built in so called "factory settings" such as Swift had, and also covers Kit and Plan boats and smaller builders whose output was only 2-3 a year.

In the several pages that cover Joe Swift in the latter book, it also puts the number at between 8000 and 9000 boats. There is also a picture of a Swift BU Runabout called the Model S-115-R Class BU Runabout. The picture of the runabout was from a Swift ad and furnished to the author of this book by Dudley Malone.

I was fortunate enough to be given these books and others by my lovely wife Eileen, for Christmas presents several years ago. I believe the got them thru Amazon if any one is interested in adding to their knowledge about boat racing. They have been out of print for several years now so could be hard to find.

[Mark75H]

I believe the source of that particular info for all of those books is Jeff Rodengen's magazine articles from the time period involved ... then the books are just quoting each other.

The source for Rodengen's mag article was probably Merc PR material ... supervised by Joe Swift

[Mark75H]

The runabout from 1951 Swift flyer

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

If indeed the source material for these three books referenced was one and the same, namely Joe Swift, unless someone can prove he was not telling the truth, it doesn't get much better than "from the horses mouth".

It would now seem to be up to someone else to prove that it was not true.

[DeanFHobart]

Thanks Everyone,

This is really good history. It makes sense that Swift built runabouts, because the first couple of APBA Stock Outboard seasons, there were only the runabout classes. The hydro classes didn''t come until later.... maybe 2 or 3 years.

Best Regards To All.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Dean:

In one of the books mentioned (don't remember which now) it says that Joe Swift personally petitioned APBA or had a lot to do with getting Hydro's legalized as a class in the Stock Category.

He was building Hydro's for the "Alky" classes at the time and probably saw a tremendous market for his boats if they (Hydro's) were legal for Stock also, hence his push to get them approved. Would be interesting to know if he knew Kiekhaefer at that time and they worked together on the approval as everything I have ever heard or read about Kiekhaefer is he was like a bull in a china shop and did not let much stand in his way if he saw a market or opportunity for sales of his products. The approval of Hydro's in Stock would certainly do that.

[DeanFHobart]

Thanks To Everyone,

Our sport has some really cool history... there is almost too much to comprehend.

Everybody have fun...................

[Mark75H]

I think Bill Van is right