First 600hp Mercury Verado V12 outboard engine lands in Australia

Mercury Marine Australia posted a video on social media late last week showing the massive engine – it stands more than 2.0 metres tall and weighs more than 570kg dry – being delivered to its Australian distribution centre in Melbourne’s southeast.

The distribution centre also has a workshop attached where the 600hp Mercury Verado V12 is likely to be fitted to the boat that will wear it.

While the 600hp Mercury Verado is not the most powerful outboard engine ever made – that honour belonged to the now-extinct 627hp Seven Marine supercharged V8 – at 7.6 litres it is definitely the largest displacement.

The new engine is optimised for larger boats ranging from around 11 metres to 15 metres in length that would have traditionally used multiple smaller outboard engines to produce the equivalent performance.

Mercury’s owner, Brunswick Corporation, owns boatmakers including US brands Sea Ray, Bayliner, and New Zealand-based RIB brand Protector – all of these are obvious candidates for the new outboard engine.

According to Mercury Australia, we should learn which boat it will be fitted to in the next few weeks.

What is known, though, is the equally impressive vehicle that will haul the test rig around – a brand-new RAM 2500. The US-styled light truck – modified so that it can be driven on a standard car licence – was teased in social media images posted last week wearing Mercury V12 stickers.

Not much is known about pricing ahead of the Mercury Verado 600’s official launch in Australia later this year, although speculation over US pricing suggests it will be somewhere north of $100,000 by the time it is bolted onto the back of an Australian delivery boat.

A number of buyers are believed to have already expressed interest in the engine.

However, it is unlikely to be a case of buying the V12 outboard engines and swapping them out for those on an existing transom that will be too weak to support the new units.

Instead, buyers will need to fit them to an all-new boat specially made for the Verado V12, and able to handle both its flush-mount configuration – the outboard engine remains fixed in place while the lower unit turns to provide steering – and its extra grunt via a two-speed gearbox that gives good hole-shot performance via counter-rotating propellers to get the boat up onto the plane and extract good fuel economy at cruising speeds.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed the pace of the 600hp V12's launch in Australia, boatsales.com.au expects to be one of the first media outlets to test the flagship outboard engine when it hits the water in November.