Force Engines announces they are going out of business.

[johnnydmd]

Citing profit margin issues due to rising costs and declining sales and will be liquidating everything. Many are blaming Horizon Hobby who seems to have decided for whatever reason to stop selling nitro anything (probably idiotic reasons which I won't go into).

Shame, as these guys have been around a long time and produce a number of RTR engines like HPI, etc. Of course, there's always a chance that whoever buys their tooling/assets will start it up as something else, similar to Novarossi/Nova Engines. I would expect the affected companies in the RTR scene to turn to SH to power their nitro offerings, well, hopefully.

Never like seeing this, especially when it seems there has been a revival in nitro interest lately, and a decent amount of new stuff.

 

[fstnd]

That sucks. Their engines were really great quality for a good price, my old tortured 4.6 still runs amazingly. SH doesn't seem bad though, I wonder at what price they're willing to sell new RTR engines if they do.

 

[tudordewolf]

That would be a bummer, they are Kyosho's RTR brand too. Where'd you hear this news? I can't find any mention of it online.

Horizon still carries OS, SH (as Dynamite), and Saito, they haven't had Force engines in years.

This old forum post from 5 years ago alleges that the Magnum/Asp factory closed down and the parent Sanye company was ending operations, as does this forum post from 2.5 years ago, but you can still buy their whole range of 2-strokes from a teeny .06 to the monstrous 1.80, and 4-strokes from .52 to 1.80 for retail prices, even a twin-cylinder 1.60. and mikegoesflying just started offering their engines again this year. It's possible this is just all the old stock being sold off, but even if that's the case, it looks like there will be supply for years to come. You can still get new-in-box OS engines from the 90's for "flyable" prices.

They also predict the demise of OS by now, which hasn't happened.

The nitro revival is encouraging, I count myself as part of it, having only bought my first nitro in 2021, it felt like archaeology learning about all the no-longer produced models, but there's more on the market now than there was then.

 

[A Big Kid]

As a Boat Racer for many years ... most of the great Italian Nitro motors .... ROSSI / CMB / PICCO / OPS started to becomes rare as hens teeth @ 20 years ago as the Gasoline / weed eater engine class's took off like a storm and obviously sales in Nitro class marine engines took a nose dive because of this.
FE got a strong following and as they say ... the rest is history

 

[tudordewolf]

For what it's worth, I dug into the Asp/Sanye closure, and found their website: https://www.sanyeengine.com/page9

Editing for clarity:
" In April 2021, there was an opportunity for us to [...] set up a company to resume production which had been out of S.Y. engine production for six years. In the same year of May, Southern Sanye(Dongguan) Power Technology Co., Ltd. was formally established, committed to absorbing the original S.Y. engine."

And they have postings talking about resuming the Asp .52FS and even 4.00 radial, so, I'm just saying, sometimes these companies revive after an extended hiatus. Maybe there's hope for Force.

 

[johnnydmd]

This has been circulating in social media since yesterday:

 

[Shinook]

As a brief update - I asked HPI about how Force closing would impact their product line, as their current nitro models are Force engines. Apparently they have a large # of engines available on hand, built models boxed already, and more orders coming in prior to Force closing. The impression they gave, accurate or not, was that the HPI nitro models would largely remain the same in the short term with no impact to supply. It sounded like any change in the nitro situation from HPI would be a while out, in other words.

I was somewhat concerned because the Savage XL 5.9 with the Force engine was out of stock basically everywhere, but HPI stated they had a lot in stock in their warehouse in Denmark, so I gather it was just an inventory issue before Christmas.