Torque is out of business???

JIMKID,

Shoot the message and not the messenger. If you don't believe the information I provided, perhaps it was inaccurate. It's also possible that they have 3 sets of molds. I don't honestly know....and to be truthful, I don't really care. If you are concerned, contact Terry Sobo....his screen-name on OSO is "Salesmanship". Again, not trying to advertise, prove or disprove...thought it would be nice to post pictures of a very impressive facility and some beautiful boats. I live in Wisconsin and we don't have too many high performance shops around here...let alone any boat manufacturing facilities. We've got CMI in Menasha and the obvious Merc in Fond du Lac.....that's about all we've got in Wisconsin (at least to my limited knowledge).

FYI...not trying to be bitter or rude....just stating what I remembered from the tour. I honestly don't think that I was being told "what I want to hear". And if I was...I believed it, so it worked. So call me an idiot I suppose?

mpally,

I don't know the specifics but I have heard that they are no longer in business. They offered quite a product but their market was VERY tiny in my opinion. Would have been nice to see them make it as their motors were very impressive.

Dave the pics look awesome, thanks for sharing them. I was impressed by the amount of boats being built at the plant, and will be in that area in about 2-3 weeks, I think a plant tour is in call. I will post some of my pics as well, thanks again, Jeff Jassby

I believe Torque's assests were purchased by a company (in California?) that builds V-Twin bike motors. There was a post on here a while back about the deal; from what I remember, the financial's on the buyer didn't look all that great, either.

IMO, the problem with Torque is that the potential market was just way to small to support the necessary R&D and manufacturing costs. If you think about, the only thing that an all-aluminum V-12 is good for is a high performance boat, and then only a fairly large and pricey one. I don't think you would have seen Torques in, say, a Baja or a Powerquest (or even a Formula), you'd only see them from the custom builders, and even then only in single digit numbers. IIRC, the motors were something like $125K a pop - even if they sold 10 a year, 1.25 million doesn't go too far these days - it probably cost them close to that just to do the manufacturing. Add in service/warranty, marketing (boat shows ain't free), R&D, etc, and I don't the volume was there. Not to mention the cut-throat competition in the big horsepower arena - Chief, Zul, Hawk, Pfaff, Sterling, Keith Eckeirt, etc etc etc - the list goes on. And there's lots of guys that can spin a wrench on big-block Chevy, soemthing to consider when you're at a Poker Run a 1000 miles from the engine builder.

That being said, they are beautiful motors, and it would have been nice to see them make it. Who knows, if the hi-po boat market turns around, they may make a comeback.

Just to clarify.... The V-Bottoms are usually in the mold 1 to 2 months. Most of the stringers are laid while in the mold. The 50 cat is usually in for 3 months as all of the stringers, bulkheads and tanks are installed prior to pulling. The 36 cat is in for 2 weeks. So everyone was right, just had to straighten out the details.
Thanks,
Terry