For years there has been a semi-black market for Mercruiser engines, drives and transom assemblies. Merc created this monster themselves. The price of a complete engine package was far less than the sum of the components (at dealer price). Hence the proliferation of the “package splitters”, my company included. This was pretty much limited to the production stuff, the blue motors never did pencil out that way. Ebay and street prices on this stuff was an embarrassment for a dealer trying to quote out of the price book.
This year’s annual price change was a shocker!! They dropped the price of Bravo transom’s well over 60%, the HP transom is now the same price as the standard one. The Alpha Gen 2 dropped over 70%. It no longer makes sense for someone to purchase an engine package and split out the components. Any Merc dealer can now be competitive with this stuff. The drives are still a bit higher than today’s street price, but in the range of reality.
Big picture, I don’t think this is bad for the consumer. But it does hurt a handful of us as dealer cost on the transoms is a fraction of what they were worth before the Holidays. And we have a s--t load of them. I sold one when we re-opened on Jan 5 for a fair 2008 price to another dealer not knowing about this, in fairness I am going to have to give him some $$ back.
So – in the near term look for some really good deals on this stuff as guys like me try to clear the shelves.
Offshoreonly Advertiser
Gold Member
Platinum Member
VIP Member
