The Bombardier Story

From Snowmobiles to Global Transportation Powerhouse

Larry MacDonald

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118482940
• eBook ISBN: 9781118485002
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The story of the company that was founded by the inventor of the snowmobile

In 1942, Joseph-Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile and founded his company to manufacture them. From its humble beginnings as an entrepreneurial company in rural Quebec, led by an enterprising inventor, Bombardier Inc. has emerged as a global leader in the transportation industry. This book tells the fascinating tale of this remarkably well managed company that has enjoyed spectacular growth in its chosen markets through strong leadership and management strategy, succession planning, strategic diversification, and turnaround and acquisition artistry.

• The fascinating story of the world's largest rail manufacturer for both railway and subway
• Reveals why Bombardier Inc. is a multi-faceted global company yet nobody knows their name
• Written by Larry MacDonald the author of Nortel Network

The Bombardier Story shows how invention and entrepreneurship, management and leadership, smooth succession planning, and turnaround and acquisition built this global powerhouse.

Part One

Chapter 1

Joseph-Armand Starts a Company: The 1940s and 1950s

Humble Beginnings

Until 2003, the corporate logo of Bombardier was a gear—a sprocket—a rather simple-looking wheel with several teeth around the circumference. The teeth are broad in width and flattened at the top, suggesting durability. Across the center of the sprocket is emblazoned the company's name.

There is much significance to this logo, for the development of the sprocket was a crucial step forward in Joseph-Armand Bombardier's quest to develop a vehicle that could travel reliably over snow. When the rubber-encased sprocket was interlocked with a rubber-belted traction device, it provided the necessary shock absorption and propulsion to power a vehicle through virtually all wintry conditions.

He used this sprocket, a cogged gear wheel made of wood and covered in rubber, to drive the track. The track itself was made of two rubber treads connected by steel crossbars. Joseph-Armand Bombardier modified an existing vehicle by placing the motor at the back and reducing the weight of the body. He also invented a revolutionary new traction system: the sprocket wheel system. The sprocket is extremely effective for delivering power to the track. This new system made snow removal easier, thanks to the openings between the steel crossbars and the rubber treads. Using rubber considerably reduced wear on components.

This major innovation was the culmination of nearly 10 years of experimentation, from 1926 to 1935, in the Garage Bombardier in Valcourt. Joseph-Armand threw his energy into mechanical research during the winter months, when there were fewer agricultural equipment and motor vehicles to repair. Joseph-Armand won his first patent in June of 1937, but it was in 1936 that he developed the B7 snowmobile—“B” for Bombardier and “7” because it could hold seven passengers. Many B7 customers were country doctors who wanted a way to reach their patients more quickly on the snowy roads of Quebec.

Most important of all, the sprocket and belted track breakthrough led to the decision in early 1937 to close Garage Bombardier and focus on the full-time production of snowmobiles under the company name of L'Auto-Neige Bombardier (Bombardier Snowmobiles).

Such were the humble origins of the transportation giant now known as Bombardier Inc., which became a world leader in land and air transportation. The sprocket, which was used on the Bombardier logo until 2003, was hence highly meaningful as the device that launched the company.

The Bombardier Snowmobile

The first vehicle adapted to travel on snow was designed in 1904.

The difficulty of motorized travel over snow is highlighted by the fact that man-made machines could fly through the air before they could travel over snow. It was easier to lift a machine into the air than to send it over snowy terrain. The Wright Brothers' first plane flew in 1903, while the first vehicle equipped for snow travel did not emerge until 1904.

In that year, Frenchman Adolphe Kégresse, technical director in the imperial garage of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, converted an automobile to a snowmobile by installing a track drive around twinned rear wheels and a set of skis at the front for steering. Returning to France after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Kégresse sold the patent rights to his inventions to automobile pioneer André-Gustave Citroën. Further development led to the Citroën Torpedo, a vehicle aimed mainly at travel over swamp and sand. It was tested in the Sahara desert, and as part of a publicity campaign in 1931, two expeditions of the Citroën Torpedos journeyed to China.

In 1913, Virgil White, a Ford dealer in New Hampshire, devised a track and ski unit for the Model T Ford and later for the Model A. These units enabled the vehicles to travel over unplowed roads in the winter. During the 1920s, he built and sold 25,000 of the conversion devices and patented the term “snowmobile.”

In 1922, Joseph-Armand, then a lad of 15 who was fascinated by all things mechanical, designed his first snowmobile: a four-passenger sleigh frame supporting a rear-mounted Model T engine with a spinning wooden propeller sticking out the back. He and his brother drove this dangerous and deafening contraption for a kilometer (just over half a mile) through Valcourt before their alarmed father ordered them to stop.

In 1924, Carl J. E. Eliason from Wisconsin invented a device he called the motorized toboggan, which consisted of a wooden toboggan fitted with two skis steered by ropes and pushed along by a steel-cleated track powered by a 2.5 horsepower Johnson outboard motor. Eliason patented his machine, and it was manufactured until 1960 by his company and, later, the FWD Corporation in Canada.

Another pioneering effort at fashioning a functioning snow-mobile was made by Adalbert Landry and Antoine Moriset of Mont-Joli in the Gaspé region of Quebec. Their effort was another attempt to convert an automobile. They put skis on the front for steering, and a caterpillar belt over the double rear wheels for propulsion. In 1924, Landry traveled the nearly 600 kilometers (375 miles) from Mont-Joli to Montreal in his snowmobile to an automobile show, arousing considerable excitement along the way.

While Eliason and the two Quebecers were demonstrating their inventions in 1924, Joseph-Armand had started an apprenticeship as a mechanic in Montreal after convincing his parents that he was more suited for that line of work than the priesthood toward which he had been in training. During the day, he soaked up the tricks of the trade, while in the evening, he took correspondence courses in electrical engineering and mechanics. He also began to teach himself English because most of the science and technology journals were available only in that language.

This was the extent of Joseph-Armand's formal training. There were no courses in engineering or science at the college or university level to provide him with the knowledge of electricity, construction, metal casting, vulcanizing of rubber, and other subjects necessary for developing his inventions in years ahead. That knowledge was mostly self-taught, acquired through reading journals and the experience of several years as a hands-on mechanic.

He was indeed driven by an insatiable thirst to learn everything about mechanical devices. Traveling companions on his occasional vacation trips outside of Valcourt remembered Joseph-Armand slamming on the brakes of his automobile and dashing across a muddy field to inspect some piece of farm machinery that had caught his eye. He was always curious about things mechanical. When he bought an airplane later in life, he took its engine apart to see how it worked.

Victor Plante, a friend who managed an automobile repair service in town, received several visits from Joseph-Armand over the years that appeared to be more in the nature of research expeditions. Without even saying hello, Joseph-Armand would start to poke around Plante's garage, stopping only to examine a new tool or mechanical part. “He was studying the piece so intensely with his eyes and his hands that he seemed to be talking to the metal,” Plante recalled. “When he put it down, I had the impression he knew everything about it, its characteristics, and its use. Sometimes, with his mind totally absorbed in what he had seen, he would leave, completely forgetting the purpose of his visit and without even saying good bye.”¹ These visits to Plante's garage must have had an air of scientific expedition: they gave him an opportunity to expand his knowledge and further advance his research.

Dr. André Lefebvre got an interesting reception when he went to see Joseph-Armand in 1939 to inquire about his snowmobiles. Before the doctor even had a chance to explain the nature of his visit, Joseph-Armand had his head under the hood of the doctor's car, a 1929 Ford. “He was examining the motor,” the doctor recounted, “an eight-cylinder, 85-horsepower job, of the same type he was using in his B7s. He wanted to know how the motor had behaved all these years, the repairs done to it, and how it sounded after running for 10 years. This seemed much more interesting than saying hello or finding out what I was there for.”²

In any event, by the time Joseph-Armand returned to Valcourt at the age of 19 to set up his own garage, the earlier attempts of previous innovators to design snow-going vehicles had met with limited success. The Eliason toboggans were functional, but they were more of a curiosity than a vehicle for use in everyday transportation. Kégresse and Landry half-tracks were clever inventions, but they were flawed: snow and ice accumulated in their massive tracks, causing a serious loss of traction; the tracks also tended to break or slip off the gears, resulting in a breakdown. Moreover, these vehicles simply had a hard time moving through deep snow.

In 1927, inspired by the technological developments taking place with tracked vehicles, Joseph-Armand stepped up his attempts to develop a vehicle that could travel on snow. He sold his prototype that same year, but, unsatisfied, he continued to pursue his research. In 1929, he adapted his tracking system to a Model T Ford, but the machine wasn't what he was aiming for. The inventor wasn't yet able to solve the problems he encountered of buoyancy, weight, and the efficiency of the traction system. He continued to experiment, increasing his efforts, until finally he invented the sprocket wheel system.

Still, Joseph-Armand was not satisfied, and he started work on a second set of prototypes based on the propeller concept from his adolescence. He gave up because of the inability to go in reverse, problems with the engine overheating, and the danger of the spinning propeller.

By the mid-1930s, Joseph-Armand's attempts had not produced a satisfactory solution, but they had nevertheless yielded many insights into what the successful design would be. For one, the engine would have to be rear mounted to better distribute the weight of the vehicle so that the front runners would not be pushed down too deep in the snow. Second, breakage and slippage of the belt (as well as strain on the engine and differential) could be reduced by using rubber rather than metal belts on the rear wheels.

By 1935, Joseph-Armand was able to combine these ideas with his sprocket device to produce a machine that finally resolved to his satisfaction the problem of traveling over snow. The prototype used a Ford chassis and other body parts, with skis in the front for steering. The engine was located in the rear with the hood facing backwards. Joseph-Armand once nearly got a parking ticket for seemingly parking the wrong way. The propulsion system was based on two parallel rubber belts coupled together with carbon steel cross-links for strength. The belt was fitted around a rear unit on either side consisting of two Ford wheels and Joseph-Armand's sprocket.

The following year, a new version called the B7 was created. A major change was the outward appearance. A lightweight cabin made of plywood, similar in shape to the Volkswagen Beetle profile, now sat on the chassis. A new drivetrain and rear suspension were developed. It included parallel bars that supported the wheels and was linked to the chassis by means of a leaf spring. Priced just above $1,000, about the same price as low-end automobiles of the time, enough of these B7 models were sold in the first year to encourage Bombardier to go into production mode.

From 12 vehicles in 1937, annual output increased to 25 in 1938 and to 50 in 1939. Rising above the ravages of the Great Depression in the 1930s, a viable business was in the making as the popularity of the B7 spread outward from the early clientele of doctors to include taxi drivers, bus operators, innkeepers, funeral directors, utility company workers, milkmen, missionaries, and traveling salesmen.

Every year, the B7 model would be improved in some way. The sprocket was made of stronger metal alloys and sheathed in a more durable rubber casing. To provide a smoother ride, the suspension system was further refined. By 1939, it consisted of soldered axles and springs in protective metal jackets, which prevented ice accumulation and allowed the front skis to better absorb the shocks of hitting hard objects.

A remarkable transformation was now under way. His automobile garage was turning into a manufacturing operation, and Joseph-Armand was evolving from a mechanic-inventor into an industrialist. A preliminary task for him in this regard was to put together a group of workers and train them in manufacturing. In the first tier of employees were members of his extended family: four brothers and three cousins.

Another important function was marketing—getting the word out on the new mode of transportation. Before delegating this function to his brother Alphonse, Joseph-Armand handled it himself. He hired garage mechanics as sales agents, and took his B7 on trips around the province to demonstrate its abilities. A favorite tactic was to visit local newspapers to get coverage. It nearly always worked. The vehicles were such attention grabbers that the editor usually assigned a reporter immediately. A giant publicity coup was scored when Joseph-Armand backed his B7 all the way up the lengthy toboggan slide near Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City just to prove it could go anywhere. Joseph-Armand's fast-growing enterprise was an all-consuming passion. He was totally absorbed, working 16 to 18 hours a day for six days of the week. Even on Sundays, the day of rest for a devout Roman Catholic such as Joseph-Armand, he would sometimes put in a few hours of work after church. There never seemed to be enough time. A few precious seconds were saved each day by bounding up stairways three or four steps at a time. This constant state of agitation often left him sleepless at night, but rather than just laying there, he would slip down to the shop and get some more work done.

He was the kind of businessman who had to be involved in every aspect of his company. Juggling the jobs of president, chief engineer, and head of production over the next 22 years, Joseph-Armand's frantic pace did not always result in the most enlightened human relations techniques when dealing with employees. He could be brusque with those who needed to have things explained at length or who did not accomplish tasks as quickly or as proficiently as he thought they should. He rarely offered praise or encouragement and preferred to impose his will to get a job done rather than engage in persuasion. Invariably, relationships with those around him were strained; employees usually felt a degree of anxiety in his presence.

Joseph-Armand was such a perfectionist that it was hard for him to stand by and watch someone else putting together one of his machines. He would at times nudge workers aside from their machinery to show them how to produce better results. He was so concerned about getting things done the right way that he had an open-door policy whereby employees were free to come visit him anytime if they had a work-related problem. The result was a steady stream of visitors from the shop floor. Instead of thinking things through for themselves (and risk the disapproval of their boss), employees found it easier to go see Joseph-Armand, even if their problems were sometimes minor.

Joseph-Armand might be in the midst of discussing a legal matter with his lawyer or a tax issue with his accountant, but he would usually drop everything to accompany the employee back to the shop floor to provide a solution. The visitor would be left alone in his office until Joseph-Armand would reappear, often with grease up to his elbows, to resume the conversation.

His accountant, Jacques Bélanger, recalled one meeting with Joseph-Armand when he suddenly stopped the conversation and strode over to a dismantled engine on a table. Joseph-Armand seemed to have a solution to a mechanical problem he had been mulling over, and wanted to deal with it then and there. He told Bélanger that he was going to take a piece for drilling. On the shop floor, he approached one of his employees and told him to drill two holes in different spots. As the shop worker slowly turned the piece over in his hand, Joseph-Armand snatched it back and went over to the drill and did it himself. Back in his office a few minutes later, he fit the piece into the engine, turned the ignition, and smiled as the engine roared to life. He then shut it down and returned to his chair to resume his discussion with Bélanger, amid the gas fumes.

Yet Joseph-Armand's impatient and looking-over-the-shoulder management style worked. Despite a number of obstacles, his business flourished and produced affluence for him and his associates. A main ingredient was his ability to pick people who would be able to work with him; the fact that employees in key positions had family ties likely also helped.

Moreover, although they and other employees may have been on edge, they respected Joseph-Armand because of his brilliance in mechanical matters. He had an inventive genius that supplied the firm with many successful products. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• A Brief History of Bombardier Inc.
• Preface
• Introduction: The Rise of a Corporation
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Endnotes
• Color Plates
• Index