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Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. Here is one of the stories we were most passionate about.
From Motor Boats 2011, no. 3, April, pp. 50-51.
With this sentence the founder of Mercury rejected the first inboard project. Fortunately, he came to his senses.
“It is not a good idea to build such an engine.” These were the words spoken in the mid-1950s by Carl Kiekhaefer, the legendary founder of Mercury Marine, when he was presented with the design of the first inboard engine. “My father,” Carl’s son Fred recounted, “was so focused on outboards at that time that he did not want to be distracted by new technology.” But when competitor Volvo Penta introduced its inboard at the New York Boat Show in 1959, Kiekhaefer quickly changed his mind. But how to catch up? The choice was immediate: the focus had to be on power. Volvo Penta ‘s inboard benefited from 80 horsepower, ten more than the more powerful Mercury outboard: at that time, although technology allowed it, it was impractical to produce outboards with more power. Engineers were instructed to work on this project in total secrecy. In 1961 it was the Chicago Boat Show that unveiled the first MerCruiser inboard to the public : the range that year included models from 125 to 200 horsepower. It was not, to tell the truth, an immediate success, partly because of resistance from the shipyards.
For the first time on a nonoutboard engine, the boater was able to control both steering and tilt. “It took a while before people understood how to build boats on which to mount inboards,” Fred recounts again. The turning point came through offshore racing. An inboard-powered boat could launch you off one wave and send you to the next, even risking throwing the driver outboard. A problem that diminished dramatically with the inboard. The real boom came ten years after the launch. In 1971 the MerCruiser 888 was born, a V8 engine with an impressive 188 horsepower that benefited from a jet propeller. By mid-1985 the figure of one million inboards sold was reached, but the big evolution was yet to come. In fact, MerCruiser ‘s recognition came at the end of the 1980s, with the creation of the Alpha One and Bravo One sterndrives: in fact, it only took another ten years (and this is 1995) to reach two million engines sold. Now we are in the new era, the electronic era that includes the Axius system, the first with a maneuvering joystick.
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