So, now that I can log on to the site as myself instead of as Derek the Head Librarian, I have some dirt to dish. I was the one who recently posted about the SX on ebay that is owned by the EOS posers. After talking with Jason at EOS on the phone, I just had to go see the EOS boats and the SX that the EOS?s were cloned from. I paid Jason and Boat Nutz Marine in Riverton, Utah an unannounced visit.
Boat Nutz is a couple of large warehouse buildings on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. I drove up and looked for a showroom entrance. There is none. No showroom entrance and no showroom. I went in a door that said ?service department? and found myself in a garage with several boats including a red and white EOS. I asked to see the showroom, but was informed by a ?mechanic? that there was none. He said he would call the salesman, Jason, and that I was welcome to look at the EOS that was being readied for delivery to a customer. I climbed aboard and had ten uninterrupted minutes to look over the boat before Jason showed up. The boat is absolutely a 2001 Toyota Epic SX. Every fiberglass part is exactly the same and in exactly the same place as my SX. The hull is identical (or at least as identical as a clone can be). Cup holders, speaker holes, control placement, swinging bow door, front locker door, glove box and underseat storage are identical to my boat. The only differences are in cosmetics, engine and instrumentation which are added after the fiberglass is already laid down. It is like looking at a tract house on a street where every house is the same except for the color, landscaping and mailbox. It actually has a pretty cool tower, but I don?t know if it is a quality one (I doubt it though).
One cosmetic change is the configuration of the transom cover. It is in three pieces with an engine cover and two side storage covers (they did make a couple of improvements like this in the boat. It has Perfect Pass Pro and comes standard with some upgrades like the ballast system, racks and stuff). Interestingly, when Jason tried to open one side of the transom, it wouldn?t open. I thought this was a really nice feature in a boat set for delivery. The engine in this one was a 330 hp Chevy derivative and there is an optional 375 hp version. Another difference in the boat was ballast tank placement. Instead of the ballast being under the floor on each side of the gas tank, they have mounted tanks vertically next to the hull in the rear of the boat. They extend back from where the cockpit speakers are to about one foot into the storage on the side of the engine compartment. I think he told me they hold 550 pounds total. I?m not sure what this configuration does to center of gravity and the stability of the boat, but Jason later assured me that it creates a superior wake and makes the boat ?more stable.? Jason also told me when I asked about carpet and vinyl that they are ?both 40 ounce which is the best in the industry like they use in Mastercrafts and Malibus.? The things he told me seemed to often mix fact with fiction. The fit, finish and upholstery actually looked like crap. Cheap, unattractive and lame.
Once Jason showed up, I asked him some questions about the boat and he took me to the assembly area. He said they hand lay the fiberglass and assemble the boats at that location and that they have been selling them for a year in California. He said they had sold ?a lot? there and eight in Utah. Later when I told him I was reluctant to buy a boat that had only been in production for a year, he changed his story and said it was two years. It is too bad I don?t know much about boat construction because he showed me two EOSs being built. One was essentially just a hull and the other seemed nearly finished. Jason said his family owned business has been building Hydroswifts since the 50s but that they were having a rough time in the I/O market and decided they needed an inboard line as well. He said his father is the bossman. He said they had been working on the EOS for three years. (Interesting that three years ago is when Toyota announced they were bagging it). I commented that it must have cost a bundle to tool up to make a new boat and he said about $100, 000 dollars. No way they created that hull for that price. Copied maybe but not created.
Wanting to see the SX that he had on ebay. I asked Jason if they had any used boats for sale because I might not want to shell out the 36 to 40K they are asking for the EOS?s. He took me out and showed me an EOS on the lot that he called the ?mule.? He said it was the boat they did all of their development on. He admitted that they had tried a variety of different engines in it to see which was the best before settling on the Chevy they chose. He said the Indmar versions didn?t work out well for some reason. I suppose if you have a hull and no engine, you might want to try a few before settling on one. It sounds totally assbackward to how I would design a boat if I was doing it from scratch. That is, I would design a boat with a specific engine in mind so the boat could be engineered to fit the engine and vice versa. Again, this suggests their molding of the EOS hull from the ebay SX. Anyway, I told Jason I wasn?t interested in the boat they had experimented on.
Next to the ?mule? was the ebay SX. Jason did not mention it to me, but I pretended to just notice it and said, ?I didn?t know Toyota made boats.? He saw a selling opportunity and said some complimentary things about it. I asked about its wake and he said it was the best ever and that is why they had ?modeled? the EOS after it. He told me the same design team that had created the Toyotas designed the EOS (unfortunately, they seem to have done so without their knowledge). I talked with him a while about Toyota boats and he told me he would part with the SX for 24.5K. I asked if it had Perfect Pass and he told me it has an ?even better? system called ACCUSKI. I just played dumb, but it was hard not to laugh in his face. I didn?t get the chance to give the SX a good going over alone like I had the EOS and I?m not sure I could have told whether it had been taken apart, copied and put back together anyway. I?m not exactly a mechanical genius. I could tell, however, that the boat had been hammered on quite a bit. There were lots of scratches, nicks and the like on the boat. I wondered if it had been banged up some in the taking apart and rebuilding process, but Jason was not about to volunteer information like that. I wish I could have taken some pictures for you all to look at.
In the end, Jason informed me that you can tour the factory and assembly plants on Thursday and that you can call and schedule a demo on Fridays when they take a group out to the lake. I won?t be able to do that since he reads this forum and now knows my face, but if anyone (Brad perhaps) who is more technically savvy than me would like to take that SX out for a demo and check whether it had been taken apart or not, that would be cool.
You know, I don?t have a problem with a guy making a buck, but if you are going to use someone else?s work to do it, you should acknowledge it, give them credit, and do it legally. You should also do it safely. If they really did copy and mold that SX hull. I would question the boats safety. I definitely question the honesty and integrity of Jason and everyone involved in the project. They lied to me, and I?m sure they lie to every customer (of course so does most every other boat and car dealer I?ve ever dealt with). Basically the EOS is like a Porsche. You know, one of those Porsche?s you get when you buy an old VW bug, use plans obtained from a magazine to alter its appearance and drive around pretending to everyone else that you have a Porsche. The Porsche is a kit car and the EOS is a kit boat. Good luck to anyone who buys one and to the poor sucker they get to buy that cannibalized SX.
