The Cigarette Racing stand at the Miami Boat Show this morning hosted the latest in the eight-year collaboration between Mercedes-AMG and Cigarette Racing: the AMG GT S parked next to the fast-boat it inspired, the Cigarette Racing 50 Marauder GT S Concept. The vinyl ester resin and fiberglass go-fast boat is more than a matching Solarbeam yellow paint job with the coupe that inspired it. Like other carmakers who have partnered with companies outside the industry - such as Nissan's recent tie-up with NASA - there's an exchange of technology involved; Cigarette said that working with AMG on composites and bonding helped them drop 1,000 pounds off the Marauder GT S Concept compared to the standard Marauder twin-engine, which comes in at 14,200 pounds. Customers who order standard Marauders can request the weight reduction (for a price), but we were told that unless they plan to spend most of their time above 100 miles per hour, the extra weight contributes to a smoother ride.
Mercedes head designer Gordon Wagener penned the exterior paint job and worked with Cigarette to design the cockpit trim, which would have seen him in familiar surroundings: Cigarette Racing owner Skip Braver is a long-time AMG customer, and the boat company based its bespoke department on the AMG Design Studio in Affalterbach. Every one of its boats is handbuilt in its factory in Opa-locka, Florida using some of the same processes seen in automaking, like bar codes to track the progress of hulls and components, computer controlled paint samples with digital files that can be sent around the world for matching, and doing all the stitching in-house to keep tabs on quality control.
The engine compartment holds two, nine-liter, four-valve, DOHC, quad-cam, twin-turbocharged Mercury Racing engines with all-aluminum blocks, each one of them good for an electronically-limited 1,550 pound-feet of torque, and either 1,350 horsepower or 1,550 horsepower depending on whether you run regular 91-octane fuel or 116-octane race fuel. So yes, that's 3,100 hp and 3,100 lb-ft at once, if you go all out. Mercury says they're the most powerful powerful emissions-certified gas-powered marine engines you can buy. The engines don't have knock sensors, though, so you have to turn a key to register the kind of fuel you're putting in, and you can switch from one to the other when two 150-gallon tanks are down to 10-percent full.
That extra potent go-fast juice will get you up to an estimated 135 miles per hour on the water, making this the most powerful boat in the company's portfolio, but it's not the fastest; they built a boat that went 172 mph during a tilt at the kilometer high-speed run, but that was with a non-emissions-certified race engine. Each motor will 'sip' 17 gallons per hour when doing 70 mph on the water, that turns into 135 gallons per hour at full speed.
We were told the switch to turbocharging - as opposed to the supercharged engines Cigarette uses in boats like its 39-foot Top Gun Unlimited - makes the engines something like 20 decibels quieter. That will make it easier to hear the "Pure" JL Audio system, which has more speakers than Congress.
The boat is already sold, naturally, for $1.2 million - a premium of about $300,000 over the typical Marauder SS, which we think isn't such a bad deal for the only one of its kind. The press release below has a bit more info.
