Twin LS-powered, 2,400-horsepower Pontoon Boat Rips up Lake
Boats aren’t exactly known for their speed, but this dual LS-powered monster can do it all.
These days, it isn’t uncommon to find GM’s LS powering just about anything you can think of. We’ve seen the legendary V8 under the hood of everything from Mazda Miatas to classic Volvos and everything in between. There are also plenty of LS-powered boats out there in the world. But perhaps none are as absolutely insane as this rather speedy pontoon built by Jim Dorris, owner of Playcraft Boats.
When you think of a pontoon boat, you think of lazy days on the lake. Floating around with your best pals, enjoying some beverages, and maybe even some slow-speed water sports. After all, pontoons are made for this kind of stuff. What they aren’t made to do, of course, is go fast. That’s the realm of sport and cigarette boats, not these floating square-shaped barges.
So why, you ask, would anyone stuff not one, but two Whipple-supercharged LS engines into a pontoon boat? Well, you see, The Lake of the Ozarks hosts a top speed shootout each year. Pretty much every kind of boat is welcome, but there’s a separate class just for pontoons. And since Playcraft builds and sells them, why not participate and show just what your capable of?
Granted, it takes a whole lot of power to make a pontoon boat fast. In this case, not just one, but two LS7s, both topped with the aforementioned blowers. Each mill produces 1,200 horsepower for a combine 2,400 raging ponies. Which is obviously a lot, but it takes that just to push this beefy pontoon to a meager 98 miles per hour.
In this particular showdown against a triple Mercury outboard-powered boat, that’s not quite good enough to score the win. Our LS-powered hero can’t quite muster enough to match that pontoon’s 106 mph top speed in the end. But personally, we know which one we’d rather have. And you can bet that this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Dorris’ monster, either.
In the end, this pontoon seems like the ultimate watercraft. You can float around with your pals and enjoy a lazy day on the lake. And if you need to get back to shore quickly when a summer storm approaches, that’s not a problem, either!
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