Between its coming-out parties in the Mercury Marine and Cigarette Racing Team booths at the 2010 Miami International Boat Show, Mercury Racing’s turbocharged 1300/1350 made a big splash almost four months ago. And then—nothing. The engines and the Cigarette AMG 46-footer that housed them seemed to vanish.

“That’s the traditional Racing way,” said Fred Kiekhaefer, the president of Mercury Racing, in a telephone interview early this morning. “We like to do our testing out of the public eye. Otherwise, we spend all of our time answering questions instead of testing.”

According to Kiekhaefer, who has run the boat twice, the engines in the Cigarette AMG have approximately 100 hours on them. The Mercury Racing engineering and testing team has focused on idle quality, mapping and throttle progressions.

“People are going to be amazed,” said Kiekhaefer. “The thing is just silk at the dock. And the torque? It’s right there.”

Speculation that the final testing and on-water validation of the 1300/1350 was taking longer than usual and that production would be late, said Kiekhaefer, is incorrect.

“Everything is on track and on plan,” he added. “We’ll start production next month, as planned.”