Outboard engine brands celebrate April Fool’s Day

Mercury Marine celebrated the day in style with a couple of pranks aimed at fooling followers.

One was ordinary enough; a new palette of four bright pastel colours for its range of 400hp engines, part of a one-day offer for those owners out there who would have wanted a very individual colour scheme for their transom.

The other one, though, had us drooling for just a second – a tiller steer option for its stonking 600hp Mercury V12 Verado outboard engine.

“There’s nothing quite like putting big power squarely in the palm of your hands,” Mercury Marine’s social media post said. 

“That’s the idea behind the brand-new Mercury 600hp V12 Mammoth Tiller. Slap one of these beasts on the back of your aluminium fishing boat or your grandfather’s dinghy and get after it!”

Meanwhile, Mercury Racing thought it would be cute to tease a new outboard engine “cowl cosy” to protect its high-power products.

“Power worth protecting. Introducing the Mercury Racing Cowl Cozy,” it said on social media. “After a day of going wide open, pull over your Cowl Cozy to protect your outboard from the elements.”

Not a bad idea in the scheme of things.

Over at Yamaha, did we detect a spot of cylinder count envy? Yamaha’s largest outboard engine is the 425hp Yamaha V8 425 XTO Offshore. However, as part of its April Fool’s Day celebration it teased … a V16 outboard engine.

“Introducing the all-new XXL Offshore V16 1225 hp boasting more than twice the horsepower of any outboard on the market,” it said in a social media post.

“Extreme power. Extreme bigness. Extreme extremeness.”

Suzuki Marine’s UK-based arm had a brilliant turn of ideas for its April Fool’s Day prank, combining a quad bike with outboard engines to create a “product development concept”.

Instead of wheels, the quad bike has a Suzuki outboard engine at each corner.

“Our talented product designers and engineers are always innovating to help maintain Suzuki's position as market leader and we are pleased to share with you a glimpse of the latest product development concept,” it said.