A Thunderbird, a deep-V hull and a famous offshore name.

Formula is a builder of fibreglass powerboats headquartered in Decatur, Indiana, and its story starts in Miami, Florida. The company’s own history traces the business to Thunderbird, a boat brand that it says Woody Woodson founded in the Miami area in 1956, with Richard C. Cole as the original designer. The same history says an eighteen-foot Thunderbird crossed from Miami to Nassau under sterndrive power in 1959. Soundings, reporting Cole’s death in May 2005, described him as the designer who developed the cathedral hull.

The Formula name arrived a few years later. The company says Don Aronow founded Formula in Miami in 1962; English Wikipedia’s history section dates the start to 1963 and places the first shop on NE 188th Street in North Miami Beach, while its information box gives 1962. Both accounts agree that the first Formula hull was the 233, a deep-V design. The company says it was built at Aronow’s direction and went on to win offshore races.

Aronow did not stay long. The company says Alliance Machine and Foundry bought Formula in 1964, after which the Thunderbird and Formula brands were both produced in North Miami. English Wikipedia adds that Aronow sold Formula and most of its moulds in 1964 and then set up a new boat company next door, and that the combined business became known as Thunderbird/Formula. The company and Wikipedia both record that Fuqua Industries bought Thunderbird/Formula in 1969, making the boats part of a much larger diversified group.

Those Florida years explain the two names that still sit side by side. Thunderbird, the older name, survives as the company behind the brand: English Wikipedia describes Thunderbird Products as the business that owns and operates Formula. Formula, the newer name, is the one on the hulls, the brochures and the website.

A short name and a numbering system.

Formula’s visual identity is built mostly from a word and a set of numbers. The name itself is short and technical, and the company has long used numerals to name its boats rather than giving each model a separate word. The first hull was simply the 233; English Wikipedia lists later models such as the 302 SR-1, which it says carried the nickname “Secret Formula”, the 370 Super Sport and the 240 Bowrider. In that system the number gives a sense of size and the words that follow give the type.

The current range on the company’s website follows the same pattern. Boats are grouped into families: Bowrider, Crossover Bowrider, Super Sport Crossover, All Sport Crossover, Center Console and Sun Sport. Inside each family the models are named by number, so a buyer reads a Formula as, for example, a 310 Bowrider or a 457 Center Console. The Center Console boats carry an extra phrase, “Sport and Fish”, which marks them out as the family meant for anglers as well as day trips.

The company also treats its own past as part of the brand. Its About section includes a page of vintage Formula brochures alongside its history and mission pages, so older catalogues sit next to the current range. The company has used the Formula name since the 1960s, and the brochure page lets readers set those older catalogues beside today’s boats.

Before the Formula name took over completely, the company ran more than one line. English Wikipedia says that the Porter-run business sold boats under the Signa name as well, and that the Signa range was dropped in 1979, after which the brand was presented as Thunderbird/Formula. Today the company’s website presents its boats under the Formula name, while English Wikipedia gives Thunderbird Products as the name of the company itself.

Design and documentation.

__S3B__

From Fuqua Industries to the Porter family.

The family that runs Formula today came to the business from another boatbuilder. The company says Vic Porter started Duo, Inc., a fibreglass boat maker, in 1958, and founded the Signa Corporation in 1970; English Wikipedia places Signa in Decatur, Indiana. Both sources say Fuqua Industries bought Signa in 1973, and Wikipedia says Porter then became president of the combined Thunderbird/Formula/Signa business.

The next step made the boats a family company. According to the company’s history, in 1976 Vic Porter bought the small-boat group, Thunderbird/Formula, from Fuqua Industries. The company says that in March 1988 it moved its corporate and production headquarters to a new plant in Decatur. It says the plant was expanded in 2000 and again in 2006, and that corporate offices, sales and production now share one building there. The company’s address today is in Decatur.

The Porter name runs through the management. The company names Scott Porter as president and Grant Porter as executive vice president in charge of product development and manufacturing, with other members of the second generation in sales, marketing and human-resources roles. It also names a third generation working in the business. All of this is the company’s own account of itself.

For a design guide, Formula shows how a short, technical name and a plain numbering system can carry a boat brand for six decades, while an older name, Thunderbird, stays in the background as the company behind it. Compare Sea Ray and Cobalt, two other American builders of family runabouts and sport boats. For this guide we use Decatur navy, racing red and gelcoat white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Formula’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.