Mercury Marine has pulled out all the stops with the Mercury Racing V8 500 R, a compressor engine that instantly takes its place at the top of the outboard power-to-weight ratio hierarchy. 

With eight cylinders, plenty of displacement and a big compressor to blow it through, this engine is guaranteed to pack a punch at all engine speeds...

Where would powerboating be without Mercury? Mercury Marine's brand new high-performance engine, a 4.6-litre supercharged V8, a light engine capable of delivering 500 horsepower and a truckload of torque, will make you wonder...

Opponents of sporty internal combustion engines will probably have a field day when they discover this magical engine and argue that everything should be converted to electric and that 100 HP is enough, no matter what...

Fortunately, companies such as Mercury, while well on the way to going 100% electric for low power, are continuing to develop internal combustion engines, which are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

Is this a rearguard action? Not at all, it's avant-garde, because e-fuel and other synthetic fuels are not far off and will probably develop massively in the decade to come, while preserving these magical machines that are the big blocks.

There's no way of replacing the immense pleasure provided by a combustion engine, especially a V8 like this Mercury Racing V8 500R, for lovers of fine mechanical engineering, whether floating or rolling, with that provided by an electric motor! 

The new Mercury V8 500 R is an evolution of the V8 450 R, from which it takes the 4.6-litre block fitted with a much larger compressor. Compressors have a major advantage over turbos in that they are driven by the crankshaft and not by the exhaust gases, so their response time is virtually non-existent. Compressors optimise torque at low revs and transform the engines on which they are fitted.

The V8 500 R is also equipped with an intake management function that takes into account the humidity of the air admitted, a function that in wet conditions (waves, high speed...) delivers up to 30 HP more than a similar engine without this feature.

Light (326 kg, just over half the weight of the extraordinary Mercury Verado V12 600 HP with a streamlined 'torpedo' baseplate), the V8 500 R is designed for the sportiest outboards in single, twin, triple, quad, quint and sextuple configurations, made possible by the synchronisation of electrical and electronic controls and the four baseplate lengths available.

Note that Mercury Marine's current promotions and zero-interest loans apply to "small" engines, and therefore not to the Mercury Racing V8 500 R. Too bad...