- mercedes-amg has revealed its latest in a long series of cigarette racing boat projects in miami, site of the annual miami boat show.
- the amg boat has six (count 'em) engines, all 450-hp supercharged v-8s sourced from mercury racing.
- oh, and there's a matching mercedes-amg g63 cigarette edition suv.
the overly pedantic might get hung up on the fact that the latest amg-branded cigarette racing boat doesn't have mercedes-amg engines. listen: that's okay. the affalterbach crew doesn't make outboards. but if they did, they'd probably be 4.6-liter supercharged v-8s that make 450 horsepower each. fortunately, mercury racing builds just such a powerplant, the 450r, and it's narrow enough that six of them—six!—will fit on the 14-foot-wide stern of a cigarette racing tirranna, a 59-foot-long center console.
so equipped, you have a 20-ton boat that does more than 80 mph. it doesn't require very strenuous mental gymnastics to connect this vessel to its amg muse, the g-wagen. let's see: a huge, overpowered machine that's way quicker than you'd expect? it checks out.
for the first time, this amg-branded boat was designed in tandem with a matching car. thus the g63 cigarette edition, which was specced out at the amg performance studio in germany, has a macchiato beige and dark-blue interior that matches the cabin of the boat. while the amg logo adorns the flanks (and upholstery) of the boat, there are also cigarette logos inside the g-wagen on the grab rail and the floor mats. okay, so maybe branded floor mats don't seem like the news of the decade, but mercedes-amg doesn't go wantonly applying other companies' logos to its vehicles. not unless they're legit.
the tirranna isn't the quickest amg boat to date—some of the prior creations have topped 130 mph—but it definitely has the most presence. it's huge. there's a spacious cabin below decks with a king bed and a separate bathroom. above deck, there's room for 26 passengers. the transom includes a kitchen with a sink and a grille. and all of that will haul along at 82 mph. the tirranna is like a really fast condo.
we didn't quite hit the 80s out on key biscayne, thanks to sloppy chop, but the leviathan cigarette was happy bulling through the wakes and chop at more than 70 mph. go ahead, hit that ferry wake at 50. it doesn't care. and that stability extends to drifting, too, thanks to the seakeeper gyro stabilizer spinning at 9000 rpm down in the bilge. power that thing up, and the boat magically stops rolling (at least, not so you'd notice). think of the money you'd save on dramamine. and the bow thrusters fore and aft might help save money on xanax, too. it sure seems to take the stress out of docking when you can just command the boat to slide sideways, like using the force.
so, fuel economy: it's about a half a mile per gallon when you're at or near top speed. but if you wanted to save some fuel, you could just shut down one of the six engines. it'll still do 78 mph.
