The Birth of a Brand

By adding an actual carburetor to the THOR single-cylinder outboard motor, both the gas mileage and the performance were greatly improved. The earlier mixing valve innovation relied upon the “spark lever” to regulate the engine, requiring a full gas charge at all speeds. This resulted in the poor performance of the spark plug, gas mileage and general smoothness of the ride. The introduction of the new carburetor allowed Kiekhaefer to advertise a smooth acceleration with a hand-controlled throttle comparable to the smooth acceleration of a fine automobile.

By this time, more than 2,300 THOR outboard motors had been shipped to Montgomery Ward, and they were so impressed with Kiekhaefer’s ability to exponentially improve quality and performance without increasing the cost that they offered him a contract to develop a new outboard exclusively for them. When the prototype for the new 3HP Sea King was delivered, he was awarded an order for 20,000 pieces. Soon another manufacturer contracted Kiekhaefer to develop an exclusive outboard motor design, and Western Auto became the 2nd client of the Kiekhaefer Corporation, ordering not only a single-cylinder design, but a twin-cylinder as well.

When Kiekhaefer realized he had potentially opened a can of worms by going into business with two mail-order houses when he had just narrowly escaped a disastrous outcome with one, he recognized that he, too, could sell outboard motors. With that, Mercury was born, named after the Roman God of Speed. While scrambling to fulfill orders from Montgomery Ward and Western Auto, Kiekhaefer put his focus on improving the mechanics of the basic design.

The addition of the carburetor and throttle along with the original improvements to the starting spark had made the upper portion of the motor much more efficient, but the pilfered design of the crank shaft and the clumsy system of pipes, pumps and hoses presented the perfect opportunity for improvement of the lower unit of the motor. Kiekhaefer worked like a sculptor in clay to create the now-familiar knife-edged shape.

The next challenge he focused on was the cooling requirements for his new streamlined model. This was resolved with a rubber impeller, which doubled the water capacity of competitive systems and could cool without being vulnerable to swallowing sand, weeds or other debris. Finally, he focused on improving an old concept of the Reed Valve, something Evinrude had abandoned in 1935. This flexible valve allowed one-way air passage into the crankcase, and prevented backfires.

His newest innovations provided the finishing touch to his new brand. Mercury launched it’s line-up of 5 motors in 1940, and was so busy filling orders for it’s own distributors, plus the Sea King brand for Montgomery Ward and the Wizard brand for Western Auto Supply that with only one month to spare before the 1941 New York Motor Boat Show, he quickly incorporated only two simple changes to his 1940 line-up. The old tank design was prone to dents and rust, so he modified it into a two-piece cast-aluminum tank and added a magna-pull starter. As the showstopper, he could only bring a teaser-
campaign to the table, promising a Mercury Mystery Motor called the “Thunderbolt”. He had just a prototype of a 60lb four-cylinder engine that fired every 90° which demonstrated how “overlapping” firing allowed smooth down throttling, promising a product with four-cylinder flexibility and two-cylinder simplicity.