A question came up during the Assembly last year about how Morris compared to the other canoe companies. It was answered by saying that they were a luxury brand similar to Rolls Royce. Old Town was likened to General Motors as a comparison. It occurred to me that the scanned catalogs might offer a more analytical way to compare various canoe companies through how they priced their products relative to each other over time. I had traced the price changes of an 18 foot long Old Town Guide's model through the catalogs in an article published in the December, 1996 issue of the Wooden Canoe Journal so it was fairly easy to add the prices of similar canoes from some other manufacturers as shown below. The Morris D was consistently priced higher than the Old Town and that the Thompson Indian was often at the low end of the range. The Kennebec prices were usually in between these two. I was surprised to see the White and Chestnut prices were above Old Town ones although exchange rate issues may explain the Chestnut differences. Pecaco started high and ended low but this may simply reflect the struggles of starting a canoe company during the inflation from World War One.
Benson
Benson
