Italy leads surface drive market expansion

摘要

The market for surface drive systems is A expanding slowly as far as the take up is concerned but this slow take up has not prevented new manufacturers from entering the market, writes Dag Pike. Today the choice of surface drive systems is very wide and Italian manufacturers are playing a large role in the expansion. This can be accounted for by the fact that Italian boat builders are Europe's largest users of surface drives. The modern surface drive concept was originally developed in Italy when patrol boat builder Italcraft used a very simple surface drive system on its high speed patrol boats back in the 1960s. On these early drives, the propeller shaft emerged from the hull low down on the transom and the propeller was located just behind the transom with only its bottom blades protruding below the hull. This simple system worked effectively at high speeds but it had limitations for low speed operations with poor ahead and astern power at low engine speeds.