Mercury’s V10 Verado amps up the performance factor
When you think of V10s you think of automotive performance. Mercury wants to do the same for boatsHey, want a cheap Audi performance car? Thanks to Mercury Marine, there’s a couple of them sitting idle at Ford du Lac, the outboard and inboard boat engine maker’s headquarters in the central US state of Illinois.
They’ll be low mileage. However, they’ll also be missing one important component – the growling, powerful V10 once shared with Lamborghini and powering everything from the Audi R8 sports coupe to the S8 limousine.
Why the engines? Well, no one else in the marine world makes a V10 engine, so when Mercury decided its next-generation high-performance 350hp and 400hp outboard engines would use one, it went shopping for some V10 cars it could benchmark against.
David Foulkes, the chief executive of Mercury’s owner, Brunswick Corp, said V10s have held the status as some of the most exciting engines in the automotive world – engines such as Formula One’s 3.0-litre, Lamborghini’s 5.0-litre, and the Dodge Viper SRT-10’s 8.4-litre.
“Whenever I think about the V10s I think about performance, and this engine turns any boat it’s on into a high-performance boat,” he said.
Mercury is unique in the marine sector because none of its outboard engines use narrow-bore blocks that were first built by cars, and then tipped on their side and shoehorned onto the transom of a boat.
It means the brand can design a new outboard engine pretty much from a clean sheet, ensuring it will be more fit for purpose than a modified road donk.
According to Mercury Marine chief executive Chris Drees, the new V10 is a much better product for the brand.
In contrast to the supercharged inline six-cylinder engines it will replace, the new V10 is less technical, less expensive.
Drees says Mercury started testing the new engine with boatbuilders about a year ago, with engines already starting to roll off the V6 and V8 engine production line, and not the V12 production line.
“The design requirements for this engine were very different than for the V12,” Drees said.
“So they [the engineers] had to solve the problem of how to make this a simple engine, how to make it lightweight, how to make it work on a variety of different applications.
“And those problems aren't as easy as people think by adding two cylinders. So they went through a lot of work to make sure that this met with the needs of our builders and our end customers.”
Soon the V10 line will be running at three shifts a day as the outboard engine maker attempts to meet a rush in demand for its new “conventional” engines.
Australia will need to wait its turn to see the new V10, though, with the first deliveries expected in April next year.
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