Abu Garcia

ABU began in 1921 in Svängsta, Sweden, as AB Urfabriken, a precision works founded by Carl August Borgström that made pocket watches, telephone timers and taximeters. When demand for those products fell away during the Second World War, the founder's son Göte Borgström, a keen angler, steered the company into fishing reels; ABU dates its first reel, the Record, to 1941. In 1952 ABU launched the Record Ambassadeur 5000, the round red baitcaster that made the company famous, and through the 1950s and 1960s added the deeper-spool 5000A, the larger 6000, the ball-bearing 5000C (made from 1966) and, in the 1970s, high-speed models such as the 5500C and 6500C plus the big 7000 and the automatic two-speed 9000. In the United States the reels were sold by the Garcia Corporation, ABU's importer. When Garcia went into Chapter 11 in 1978, ABU was owed a great deal of money and stepped in, acquiring the American business around 1980 and renaming the company Abu Garcia. Swedish production of the classic Ambassadeurs continued for decades afterwards; spinning reels and newer baitcasters were outsourced to Asian factories from the mid-1990s, and more Ambassadeur models followed over time, while some are still made in Svängsta. To date a vintage Ambassadeur, read the number stamped on the foot: from 1964 it is a lot number that encodes the production year, in formats that changed over the years, so check it against an Ambassadeur dating reference. Collectors pay most for early, original, well-documented reels; later Swedish and Asian-made reels fish well and sell for less.