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Hype, Hoopla, & Reality:

What's Up with E-TEC?

After a number of months of reviewing Internet threads, infomercials, and magazine articles, and folding in our own experiences with Evinrude's E-TEC technology, we take a stab at presenting a balanced view of the product, and make some recommendations to potential buyers.

Background   Infomercial   PR & Press   Performance   Service, Reliability & Conclusions 

You really have to give Bombardier Recreational Products' (BRP) marketing group credit. If the saying "There is no such thing as bad press" is true, then BRPs E-TEC infomercial was some of the best press they could have gotten.

More kilobytes of web bandwidth have been wasted discussing this infomercial than than we would care to guess. Not all of it positive comments, but then again, maybe that was the intent.

If you would like to see the infomercial (which originally aired in 2005), an updated version is available on DVD from your local Evinrude dealer. It's not available on the web directly from Evinrude. Early on, clips from the infomercial were available as a download from the Evinrude website, but were subsequently removed.

So what's all the fuss about? If you haven't seen the infomercial, Evinrude basically goes over the E-TEC technology, explains the benefits, then does some side-by-side comparisons with competing products.

Who do you think comes out on top? Duuuh....You shouldn't be surprised to learn that E-TEC comes out on top in all the tests. After all, it IS their infomercial.

Like every infomercial, they can't tell you outright lies, but they can present their story in a way which seems to defy common sense, not to mention the laws of physics. And that's where the controversy lies.

What kinds of things are we talking about? Following are the issues that seem to create the most fervor amongst the public, in order of decreasing adrenalin levels.

We've summarized and interpreted the available data, added additional information that we've uncovered, and added our own analysis. Click on the links below to see more on:

So what's our overall assessment of the informercial?
The infomercial contains basically valid data. However, to experienced boaters, the data is often presented in ways which appear to be attempts to mislead consumers. If you can look past that, you'll see that the infomercial makes a compelling case for E-TECs.
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