In the late 70"s and early 80"s all you would seen in performance boating were High Performance Outboards.Then the Early and late 80"s it was I/O with Jet Drives.Then came 90"s with the I/O with High H.P. and exotic out drives. Now maybe a change the industry and the way we boat is going another direction.Higher Horsepower Outboards such as Merc Optimax 300"s XS with performing lower gear cases, Pro-Max"s,Merc Supercharged Verado"s. Evinrude with the E- Tec, and Yamaha.The Outboards as mentioned have much improved fuel efficiency over the I/O along with engine torque, less weight and less cost to operate and maintenance.To insurer performance boat with O/B 's is less money than one with Blue Motors.I would seem to miss the muscle sounds and a slight cut back in top end performance. Do you see a trend change on the rise here? Which way would you go, if you had the option to choose?

I would have thought that there would be a change in the wind toward outboards, but, I'm not seeing it yet. In our case we are showing a very fast outboard but still you can see the dreamy look on the face of people when we describe the I/O version. Unless they were already partial to O/Bs they still want the big block.

i recently went from a 28/30 checkmate w/540 to a new 24 checkmate with a 225 opti. i'm impressed so far with the economy and performance. i expect that in a year or 2 i will take another shot at this and end up with something a little bigger with twin o/b's. the big blocks and bravo's have beat me up pretty bad over the last few years and i think the o/b's will put the fun back into boating for me

I Went From A 34 Ft Vee To A 28 Cat With Outbords Love Them Wont Go Back But If I Go To A Bigger Boat Down The Road Will Have To Get Big Blocks Again To Get The Speed I Will Want I Moving Up To A New 30 Now But Outbourds Will Still Do For Now Just My 2cents

A friend of mine recently purchased a boat with a Mercury Optimax 225... the thing screams... plus, it burns a fraction of the gas that the twin I/O's did.

Years back, outboards weren't that much money. But today your looking at around 20K for a motor. We just put together a new model 21' Superboat Millenium center console. Instead of a 250 outboard, we're selling it with a 260HP 5.0 EFI Mercruiser. The motor and drive package is around 8K. And has a 6 year warranty. Thats a big saving$ when you think about it.

Yup

Don't get me wrong, I love my I/O's but the power/weight ratio's and fuel economy of outboards are no match compared to I/O's for many applications, and this leads to better performance numbers in a lot of tests. I think with increasing pressure from the oil industry, we'll see outboard use in many offshore applications continue to grow. The technology we've seen in recent years with them is awesome!

Bring back the Johnson/Evinrude 300hp V8!

No