[blizzardND]

Thats a '96?? Its in great shape!!!

When I left Sugar Sand Marine in 97, we were putting in 190's, 55mph in a 16' Tango Years later they were putting in 250's into 19' and 21' boats. The 190's would pop you right out on a slalom ski where the 120 was a drag on 2 skis.

Hardest pop out of the water I ever had was some kid out at our test lake with a souped up rotax Sea-doo wave runner, thought he was gonna rip the rope right outta my hands.

The little Jet Boats 13-16'were a fun boats to design and build. But once you get into the same price point as the I/O's the market goes to hell for the jet boats.You start spending a bunch of time and expense adding all the little stuff to add to the basic boat, gimmicks to sell against the I/O's and to me it was against the whole idea of building a zippy little boat you could suberge every now and then.

I know the fuel economy of those Rotax's was something we sold against all the time. But Sea Doo fought back hard using the big company to out market us. It was always a fun rivalry. We would take a new boat out and put a min of 8-10 hours breakin on the motor before we ever sent a boat to a boat test, then I would bring it back thru the plant and they would clean it up, wrap it as if it was "fresh" off the assembly line. The mags would think it was a "new" boat and race it against other "new" boats. Even the other Mercs we would always be a mile or 2 per hour faster!
-blizz