The Crescent Engines Story:

In 1964, I was invited to participate in the World 500cc Hydroplane Championship in Stockholm, Sweden. I was invited by a friend to drive a Crescent powered Hydroplane. The only stipulation being that I had to bring my own boat and propellers. Sid-Craft built an 11 Ft. hydroplane and shipped it to Sweden before the May 30, 1964 race.

I arrived about a week before the race and we did some testing on a small lake outside of Uppsala, Sweden. After I finished testing and feeling I had the boat going quite well, I was asked by the people of the Crescent company to let a German driver, Walter Vicer take a test run in the boat. He was used to driving a lay down hydroplane instead of a kneel down hydroplane, he was not familiar with the handling. On the 2nd or 3rd lap around the lake, he lost control of the boat and crashed into some large rocks at the end of the lake. He was quite severely injured. After looking over the damage, I felt the boat was beyond repair.

The crescent people contacted a cabinet maker in Stockholm, Sweden, and in record time he was able to repair the boat and I was able to compete in the championship race. After all the excitement, I finished 2nd in the World 500cc Championship. During talks before my return to the US, it was decided that I would be the North American distributer for Crescent Racing Engines. 

The first alky engines arrived in the fall of 1964 and by 1965 the C-stock engines had started to arrive. The Super C-class was formed in APBA and competition began. After about 25 of the C-stock engines had arrived, I was advised by the factory they would no longer supply lower units or drive-shaft housings. They were kind enough to supply me the patterns and we started production of these items in the US. Approximately 25 drive shaft housings were built, 50 lower units, and we used Mercury clamp brackets to finish things off. All told, close to 50 C-stock engines were sold before Powerhead Productions had ceased and about 25 of the alky engines had been delivered in the US. The factory finally decided it was not profitable to manufacture anymore powerheads and we discontinued selling the engine.


One mystery that should be cleared up; is that the only difference between C-stock and C-alky engine was that C-alky engine had higher compression and used 3 large O’Dea built alky carburetors.


Today crescent engines have become quite collectible. A small group of Crescent owners in Sweden, still race the engines today with some small parts being made by vendors in Europe.