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Commentary: Old School Made New

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New to the media-scape, Wave to Wave Performance Boat Magazine is a sharp new featured-based digital publication that addresses the single-engine sportboat market. (Click image above to visit the publication website.)

I confess: I cringed when I read the subject line, “Outboards: The Fall of Mercury Racing and the High Performance Opportunity” in an offshoreonly.com message board thread. Here we go, I thought, another expert opining on how the most successful high-performance marine engine company in history is somehow missing the mark. This ought to be good.

Turns out that the article linked to in the thread—save for its unfortunate headline—was good. Really good.

Properly labeled “Opinion,” the piece mourned the demise of the high-performance two-stroke outboard market while presenting lower-output, high-performance four-stroke outboards as replacements worth pursuing. Author Jared Powell, a 39-year-old New York City-based advertising copywriter who grew up around single-engine go-fast boats in Canada—his family even produced them—made a strong case. That his notions likely do not fit into Mercury Racing’s future product plans doesn’t matter relative to the point he was making.

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