With Crane Cams shuttering operations, products like its legendary cams and these roller rocker arms for Chevy V8s (shown above) may be history.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal is reporting that Crane Cams, the 56-year-old performance parts manufacturer, has closed its doors and laid off its employees.
SEMA's midday calls to Crane's Daytona Beach headquarters received an automated message stating that the offices were closed after-hours. Calls to Mikronite Technologies, Crane's parent company in New Jersey, yielded the same message.
The News-Journal quoted a Crane employee as saying the company had told workers during the past week that layoffs were likely. Crane had gone through a series of small layoffs recently, he added. A handful of comments on the News-Journal's webpage hosting the story, purportedly from Crane employees, speculated that the company was still in a buyout transition.
Sources at magazine publisher Source Interlink Media—venues for Crane's advertising—however, confirmed their information that the company had closed.
Crane Engineering was founded by Harvey J. Crane Jr. in 1953. Mikronite, an industrial technology firm, bought Crane in 2006.
Crane Jr. was elected to the SEMA Hall of Fame in 1981.