Thanks Mark, Troll, and Kevin! I figured there had to be some sort of missing link model that would explain it. And the Partner model came first, huh? Pretty interesting. As I said earlier, there are hardly any Partner's around here, so knowledge like that certainly isn't going to be picked up by experience in the shop.
Seems like Partner contributed way more to the ELUX group technology wise than did Jonsered. In the US at least, Jonsered held a much stronger market position, but after the pure Jonnys, like the 49's and 70's, Jonsered was borrowing rather than contributing as far as the tech stuff goes.
Yes I knew the Partner 500 came before the Husky 50 and Acres list it about 5 years sooner. I knew that Partner was aquired before as well.
Partner seemed to be spotty in the US at best as far as dealers went and they seemed to be popular in only certain areas so they were never well known all over.
They were probably one of the better companies that Elux grabbed up, and like you said they used a bunch of it.
In the time frame (mid 70's-mid 80's?) that Elux was doing all the buying, I would think that Partner was leading the pack as far as europe's saws went.
Its a shame they got turned into europes consumer saw distributor as well as it happeing to Poulan in the US.
Very smart business for Elux though.
"Seems like Partner contributed way more to the ELUX group technology wise than did Jonsered"
That seems to be a fact, several Partner saws ended up wearing Jonsered labels.