My faulty memory box tells me in 1998, only the Marquis had a remote for the Girard. For some reason, my '98 Patriot had one, and it surprised the folks at Girard. At some point, SMC may have started including a remote in all Beavers. As I understand it, the control box needed to be built for a remote, or you could not add a remote later without changing the control box to work with a remote.
Larry