The Long Awaited Crane Cams Auction Begins as Scheduled Today

by Tim Davis

Finally, after much to-do the liquidation of the Crane Cams property in underway – just two hours ago the intellectual property rights were sold at auction for $1.2 million. The purchaser is undisclosed at this time, but they were a group of 4-5 men with highly a highly organized plan of attack, each guy had volumes of printed material, one of them had a laptop running with an air-card, etc. The actual buyer was undisclosed, but several members of the group seated together bidding were identified to me as former directors of Crane Cams in the pre-Mikronite era. After purchasing the intellectual rights, this same group of gentlemen purchased all of the current inventory on hand, as well as the raw materials, and work in process. The then began purchasing equipment, very selectively I will add, and were the high bidders an every item they bid on with what seemed to be no regard to price. They did not purchase any of the older cam grinding equipment, but did pruchase most of the precision equipment that was selling in the early lots.

Also of note: Representative of Scorpion Performance were on hand, and after much press online about aquiring Crane Cams they ended up bidding $1m for the entire contents and assets of Crane Cams. That bid was defeated as the very next lot # was the intellectual rights alone, and those sold for the previously mentioned $1.2m. The Scorpion reps departed the bidding area shortly thereafter.

More details to come as the auction continues… You can see below that much of the equipment is in sad shape… like aging dinosaurs and museum pieces…

Click HERE for the previous report on Scorpion’s alleged purchase efforts.

Click HERE for the full report form Daytona Beach News Journal reported Bob Koslow.

UPDATE:

Following the disappointment that reports of a possible rescue of Crane Cams had not materialized, S&S Cycle has announced that it has stepped in to acquire some of the assets of the Daytona, Florida based manufacturer.

The deal involves the inventory, intellectual property and trademarks for all Crane automotive and motorcycle electronic products, and for Crane’s motorcycle valve train products.

The intellectual property portion includes designs, drawings and cam profiles. Crane automotive valvetrain products are not included in this acquisition. “Crane Cams was founded in 1953, and, like S&S Cycle, which was founded in 1958, it has become a respected and iconic brand in the high-performance industry”, said S&S in a news release of April 23rd.

S&S says it intends to continue to sell Crane products through the same distributors and dealers who have sold them in the past, and that they will establish a new facility in Daytona Beach, Florida, to manage the business and provide customer service and technical support.

This new facility will be staffed by many of the same personnel that Crane customers have worked with in the past, providing as seamless a transition as possible. S&S says that “while there may be some shortages of product in the near future, the Crane/S&S team will be working hard to fill back orders and meet future demand for Crane ignitions and motorcycle valvetrain components.”

Since the acquisition does not include the existing Crane facility at Fentress Boulevard, Daytona Beach, or any of the equipment there, manufacturing of valvetrain products will be moved to the S&S manufacturing facility in Viola, Wisconsin.

S&S CEO George Smith says that “the addition of this product line is a natural fit for our current in-house cam manufacturing capabilities as our equipment and processes are state-of-the-art. We’re also excited that the highly successful Crane motorcycle and automotive electronics line is included with this acquisition.

“This will further strengthen S&S Cycle in the electronics field by providing additional expertise to improve our product offerings in late model ignitions, among other things.”

S&S CYCLE
La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA

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