It's not surprising, but I wouldn't write them off yet.  I have been hearing about this for about 2 years.  Genmar, who owned Champion, Ranger and a few others went into bankruptcy a year or two ago.  The finally had their bankruptcy sale and a new firm bought all the boating brands.

I suspect what you will see is that Champion as a brand will go away and Ranger will absorb anything left over from Champion.  I say that because i think Ranger has the stronger brand name right now.

I say its not surprising, and I would expect to see more of this in the outdoor industry in the near future.  Being part of corporate America, I think way too many companies just don't understand the chnging market place, and they are not chnging their business models accordingly.  Combine that in th boating industry with too many brand names, and more and more sales coming thru mega stores like Cabelas and Bass Pro, and you have a problem.

It's the same thing the auto industry went through, and others.  These corporations keep building better products, but if you look at their models, they aren't updating.  The car makers were like this.  They build cars now that run 200K or 300K miles, but in order for them to make a profit, they pretty much have to sell their customers new cars every 4 years.  People just don't need to do that anymore.  It was the same with boats.  Your'e just not gonna get a guy to trade in, or sell of his 5 year old boat that still runs great.  Heck, mine is 10 years old and runs like new. 

You can see the same thing with outfits like Humminbird and Lowrance.  They keep turning out new products with new technology upgrades every year, and guys just can't keep up.  They've got to keep selling those units to pay the overhead, and pay for R&D, but the market just doesn't move that fast, and ends up getting confused by all the options.  These guys are building too many products that really don't serve anyone's needs.  They have 10 or 20 in the market when 5 or 10 would do just fine.

So, I suspect you will see Champion getting combined with Ranger and they will honor the warranty work.  Ranger will be the only remaining Genmar brand.  Although its sad to see any business go under, my personal opinion is that some of these companies are going to have to go through some pain in order to "figure it out."  Hopefully they will eventually and hopefully the end result will be better products for the customers.

Genmar spread it's self to thin then high fuel wam bad dealers.It all adds up.Mikes champ is holding up after the hull was worked on don't think Champion stood up and fixed that problem.I had a lemon on both fronts.