We had the opportunity to visit with Ian at the Miami Ilmor display and personally tell him thanks for the way their company handled one of our members engine problems. It is no accident that Ilmor has grown at a tremendous rate, and made a reputation for product and service excellence, while others have had issues.
At the Miami show they had their latest V-10 725 which first put them on the performance boat map, their Indy drive system, and some of their new V-8's.
It's hard to believe that it was only 2005 when they brought out their all-aluminum MV-10 625 based on the Dodge Viper powerplant. Since then they have steadily improved it to 725HP from the initial 625HP offering. They have also recently added an upgrade package for the original owners of the 625's to have their engines enhanced to the current 725 configuration with factory warranty.
Their new V-8 offerings, originally brought out to satisfy the towboat engine needs for Mastercraft in late 2011 when GM announced the end of the 8.1. Then, at the same time, they brought out not only the catalyzed 522HP engine, but the non-catalyzed 570HP engine for the performance boat crowd. The engines looked really good, and they have been very successful so far. Ilmor now offers 7 different V8 models along with the 4 different models of their V10 ranging from 625HP to 725HP.
They also had their Merlin Digital Dashboard on display. This system is a fully capable data-logger that can handle one, two, or three engines. Because of its inability to be tampered with, it may be an option for the race circuit to document engine maximum rpm's during races etc.
Since Miami, Ilmor has not been sitting still. They have announced the purchase of Scorpion Racing Engines out of Livonia, MI and that puts them squarely in the middle of offshore racing as Scorpion had Instigator, Cleveland Construction , Broadco, Stihl, CMS and Qatar as clients. This should make for an interesting spring in offshore boat racing.
http://ilmor.com/en/marine/performance/
The Inside Articles
