Vintage PowerSport

West Bend unintendingly made the first kart racing engine in the mid-50’s when they supplied the engines for use in a new type of McCulloch lawn mower. At the time McCulloch was busy and capital committed to developing a supercharger for Ford, so they decided to purchase lawn mower engines from West Bend instead of making their own. This McCulloch twin bladed, side by side rotary lawn mower was not engineered well, and created some concern among McCulloch’s dealer network. This prompted McCulloch to withdraw the product form the market, leaving 30,000 great little engines available for the surplus market. In 1956 Art Ingels developed the world’s first go-kart using one of the surplus West Bend engines. As karting boomed in the late 50’s and early 60’s, West Bend was along for the ride, rolling out several very successful kart racing engine models ranging in size form 5.8 cubic inches to 8.2 cubes. At one point West Bend was making more kart engines than outboard motors. In 1965 Chrysler bought out West Bend, this is when the Chrysler Power Bee name was tagged on these motors. In the 80’s Chrysler sold the small engine line and outboards to Brunswick, who also owned Mercury Marine. This is when the US Marine name was adopted. The US Marine Industrial Power Bee engine line was sold in 1991 to Wisconsin Oven Corporation, who renamed the current company United States Motor Power. US Motor Power today still manufactures the large 8.2 cubic inch model called the US820.

Anyone interested in vintage karting is encourage to visit the Vintage Karting Association website, or the Rear Engine American Racers site.

The article below shows an example of how the 820 model could be extensively modified for kart racing, producing an amazing 24 horse power!

West Bend 820 Akkerman 24 Horse Power!