aronow powerboats

47' ARONOW 47

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The mystery behind the death of powerboat racing champion Don Aronow

Don Aronow, powerboat racing champion and founder of Magnum , Cigarette and Donzi , continues to fascinate – as does his mysterious death, discovers Daniel Pembrey .

When Cigarette founder and powerboat racing champion Don Aronow was shot dead on 3 February 1987 in Miami, the boating world was convulsed, but not everybody was surprised.

Emblematic of both the American dream and a particularly magnetic kind of American masculinity, Aronow was a frontiersman, a real-life Marlboro Man and a fearless racer. He was formidably competitive both on and off the water, brutally handsome and adroit at negotiating the line between the legal and the illicit – at least until the very end. A ruthless businessman, he equally relished a challenge in his personal life; “He’d fuck your wife in a second,” said powerboat Hall of Fame racer and boatbuilder Allan “Brownie” Brown, author of Tales from Thunderboat Row . Celebrated yacht designer Michael Peters , who went to work for Aronow the day before he died, said, “He was an asshole, but he was my asshole – a benefactor for whom I’ll always be grateful.”

On 3 February 1987, Peters was aged 34 and among the last people to speak with Aronow at the office of USA Racing Team, the latest of Aronow’s boat firms. “Don and I had had a meeting to discuss my salary. He gave me a spacious office, and I thought, ‘Finally, I’m starting to feel secure in life after a recent divorce.’ I remember taking a call from a guy named Ben Kramer and telling him that Don had already left his office for the day.”

At that time, NE 188th Street was a weed-strewn, low-rise strip. The sun was lowering in the wintery afternoon yet there was still plenty of warmth and light. There was fibreglass dust in the air and the pungent smell of resin and paint. Saws buzzed and machinery hummed at the various boat shops, most of which Aronow had started at one time or another. Radios blared out the hits of the day. Still riding high in the charts was The Bangles’ recent chart-topper Walk Like an Egyptian , originally inspired by the way people struggle to maintain balance aboard boats, apparently.

There was a jumpiness, an electricity in the air, too – not unusual on the street known locally as Thunderboat Row, Performance Street or Gasoline Alley. You never knew who might show up here, from royalty and high-born celebrity clients to drug-dealing low-lifes, by way of government officials, heads of the various boat firms and a diverse population of workers who earned their livings here.

Leaving his office that afternoon, Aronow was making for his North Bay Road residence, a 1929 Spanish-style waterfront mansion undergoing renovations, 30 minutes’ drive away. Members of the Bee Gees were neighbours on both sides. Aronow was now with his second wife, Lillian Crawford – a model, Palm Beach heiress and ex-girlfriend of King Hussein of Jordan. Seemingly he had everything to live for. “Always laughing” and “full of life” were typical depictions of the man. A five-year non-compete agreement with Cigarette Racing, one of the companies he’d sold, dated to 1982 and was about to expire. Nearly 60, he talked of taking up racing again.

His 193cm, still-athletic frame barely fitted inside the sporty white Mercedes-Benz two-seater in which he drove away from USA Racing Team’s office on Thunderboat Row. Peters recalled a sound like firecrackers – “a pop pop pop , eerie and ominous. I knew they were gunshots”. Little could prepare him for the scene two hundred metres up the street. Half out of his car, Aronow lay slumped, crimson blooming across his shirt. Congregating witnesses spoke of a dark Lincoln Continental having pulled up alongside Aronow’s white Mercedes.

“Who is this guy?” asked an arriving first responder. “That’s the king,” came the response, according to The Washington Post . “He built this entire street.” Airlifted to a nearby hospital, Don Aronow was dead within the hour.

The chaotic crime scene confronting police detectives was mysterious, not least because of the geography. The “Row” was island-like, bounded by water on three sides. The narrow street itself dead-ended to the east, requiring visitors to turn around to exit westbound.  It would be easy to become blocked in here.  The murder fell awkwardly between the sort of extravagant “statement killings” orchestrated by Colombian cocaine kingpins and the kind of professional contract hit carried out by killers keen to hide their tracks, or at least ensure a clean escape. Aronow evidently stopped his car willingly; he was found with his foot pressed fully down on the accelerator, the 5.6-litre Mercedes engine racing wildly – he’d put the car in neutral, almost certainly to engage whoever was inside the Lincoln. Furthermore, there were witnesses – plenty of them, if not always consistent in the details they shared with police. Was it even a planned killing, or some crazed crime of passion?

This was not the first mystery to surround Donald Joel Aronow. He was born in 1927, the son of an affluent taxicab owner whose family had emigrated from Russia and been bankrupted by the Great Depression. Don’s origin story moves around according to who’s telling it. Certainly, young Don became wealthy by building and selling tract houses in New Jersey. By various accounts, he then fled to Florida in 1960 to escape the mob. If true, it was a curious place to hide out from them. More plausibly, he was drawn to the Sunshine State by its warmth, excitement and a different form of escapism, as many tend to be.

In Miami, his head was turned by the nascent offshore powerboating scene and in particular the gruelling Miami-Nassau race that ran for  296 kilometres. Innovations such as fibreglass construction techniques and the drag-reducing deep V hull were taking chunks from the record times, and also from crews in rough seas. Dick Bertram was the man to beat both in terms of boat design and the racing itself. His company, Bertram Yacht , drew worldwide attention.

Aronow set out after Bertram, working with designers on NE 188th Street to create deep V fibreglass Formula boats, notably the seven-metre 233. To finance the development, he sold more civilised versions, with teak decks and sleeping quarters, to the general public. But he knew from Bertram’s experience that the way to promote and build his company was by winning races. Barely had he begun to win before he sold Formula to Thunderbird Boats. “You’re never gonna make a lot of money building boats,” he was quoted as saying. “You make a living doing that. You make real money when you sell the company.”

Next, he started Donzi, named after himself, again on NE 188th Street. He’d retained his key designers. The result was the 8.5-metre 007 , named after the gathering cinematic phenomenon. It was in 007 that he beat Bertram in the Miami-Nassau race in 1965. Again, he sold his company and started a new one, Magnum, evidently named after the double-sized bottles of champagne. He raced his 8.2-metre Maltese Magnum all over the world.

These races were filled with tales of derring-do: engine burnouts and explosions, crew members being knocked unconscious or needing airlifting to hospital – some even left marooned and bleeding amid circling sharks, not to forget the high-speed collisions, including one in rough seas under a hovering press helicopter. Audiences grew. Aronow won the World Powerboat Championship in 1967 (he’d go on to win it once more and the US championship three times), and in 1968, he sold Magnum.

Barely into his forties, Aronow was now a famous, feted and very wealthy man. It was the time of the sexual revolution, and his popularity with women was almost as legendary as his boating exploits, although some women were more circumspect. Marchesa Katrin Theodoli and her husband became the owners of Magnum. “I’ve met some extremely charismatic men, including Sean Connery and Roger Moore,” she said. “Those two managed to make you feel like you were the centre of their world. They conveyed a warmth and a feeling of genuinely liking you. Whereas Don Aronow was more brash, assertive – more resolutely a man’s man. He gave the impression that he felt he could take whatever he wanted.”

Like others who bought a boat company from Aronow, the Theodolis had reason to be wary.  A pattern emerged whereby Aronow would sell his companies and then seek to eclipse them. He would build larger premises next door, on what was now known as Thunderboat Row, putting his erstwhile companies and new-found competitors in the shade. He might also try to buy the companies back, for cents on the dollar. It was testimony to the Theodolis’ diplomatic instincts that this would not become their fate.

“Don would compete with people his size,” said Michael Peters. “He didn’t pick on the little guy. He was an alpha male, like the male lion you see on safari. Don’t challenge him, and you were fine. But if you decided to take him on, don’t expect him to give ground.”

His next project was considered to be his masterpiece: the long lean Cigarette boats named after a vessel used to hijack rum-runners during Prohibition days. The idea of bad guys outracing other bad guys and seizing their fortunes appealed to Aronow reasoned The Washington Post five days after his murder. “Don was to offshore speed boats what Ben Franklin was to electricity,” an admiring Customs official told the newspaper. “I don’t want to make him out to be  the greatest boatbuilder in the world,  but in that particular class of boats, he  was unequalled.”

Again, Peters gave a qualifying view: “Don perfected things already invented: hull shapes, construction techniques and engine setups. Certainly, he added sex appeal to it all.” In 1977, Cigarette introduced the “super sexy new 35 Mistress” (as the advertisement read). “When I started designing for Cigarette in 1978, Halter Marine had just acquired the company and they perpetuated the ethos,” said Peters. “The boss’s wife would lean over my drafting table with her ample bosom and say, ‘Remember, think sex.’”

Alongside the sexual revolution came the growth in the drugs trade. A certain nostalgia colours memories of the 1970s as a time of the “gentlemanly” marijuana business. A certain Ben Kramer, who came from a seemingly good home on the Intracoastal Waterway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, started smoking pot at school and began selling it. Soon enough, he had his own yellow Cigarette boat with which to smuggle. He admired Aronow and acquired a corner of the Row, obtaining an interest in Apache, which in turn supplied the vessels he raced offshore (his fabled Warpath , based on a deep V Cigarette mould, won him a world championship). With his father, he also founded Fort Apache Marina on the Row, comprising a boat storage facility, waterfront restaurant and patio bar.

Rumours concerning Fort Apache continue to circulate, including one about the dock area, positing that camouflaged metal doors opened into large storage compartments, accessible at low tide – at night, say.

Whatever the truth of such rumours, the way South Florida’s drug business metastasised from marijuana to cocaine smuggling, to vast profits and lawlessness, would sustain five seasons of Miami Vice . In the real-life offshore racing seasons, a majority of the contestants might well turn out to be drug runners – say, George Morales, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcón, all convicted of cocaine trafficking. Race officials found themselves in invidious positions. “During the day we’re asked to patrol their race course during events for emergency rescues,” a Coast Guard official told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel . “But at night, we’re chasing many of the same guys for smuggling.”

Events took a turn towards the surreal when Carlos Lehder, the Medellín Cartel kingpin, started buying up Norman’s Cay, an island in the Bahamas some 330 kilometres off the coast of Florida, for his cocaine transport empire. By November 1981, a Time magazine cover feature was declaring that “an epidemic of violent crime, a plague of illicit drugs and a tidal wave of refugees have slammed into South Florida with the destructive power of a hurricane”. Miami claimed the nation’s highest murder rate at 70 per 100,000 residents, “and this year’s pace has been even higher”.  An estimated “70 per cent of all marijuana and cocaine imported into the US passes through South Florida”, the feature reported.  “Drug smuggling could be the region’s major [largest] industry.”

Much was explained by the state’s southern exposure and geography – its thousands of kilometres of coastline, coves and inlets. Revealingly, the Time feature predicted that Miami would remain, “as the late President Jaime Roldós of Ecuador put it, the ‘capital of Latin America’”. It reported Miami’s Federal Reserve branch to have amassed a currency surplus of $5 billion, “mostly in drug-generated $50 and $100 bills, or more than the nation’s 12 Federal Reserve banks combined.”  The associated crime could strike anyone.

Even local residents the Bee Gees were not immune. Their father, Hugh Gibb, was mugged; Barry Gibb’s wife, Linda, had her purse snatched. “No woman should be alone in this city,” Barry Gibb warned Time . “Or man,” his brother Robin added. Around one-third of the region’s murders were believed to be related to drugs.

The drug money was corrupting banking, real estate and law enforcement. It fuelled an uneasy dynamism. “New hotels and office towers are rising in Miami, and once-sleepy towns nearby are growing skylines of their own,” chronicled Time . In these circumstances, it would have been extraordinary if the drug cash hadn’t found its way into Thunderboat Row and its fabled go-fast boats.

Aronow, it seems, would sell anybody a boat, especially for cash, but if you said you were using it to smuggle drugs, “Don wouldn’t have anything to do with you,” asserted Mike Kandrovicz from USA Racing Team.

It was into this volatile, heady mix that vice president George HW Bush – President Reagan’s lieutenant in the White House’s “war on drugs” – unwittingly stepped. Bush had long been an admirer of Aronow’s sleek vessels and had equally been disarmed by the man himself. He’d bought a Formula and a Cigarette from him, describing Aronow as “a joy to be around”. As director of the CIA, he’d also interacted with Aronow, recalling how “Don came and offered to help our country”. It was just one of the unusual clients Aronow had dealings with: oil-rich Arabs, Princess Caroline of Monaco and the Shah of Iran.

At Bush’s instigation, the US Customs Service took the fateful step in 1985 of placing a $1.7 million order for high-speed pursuit boats with Aronow’s USA Racing Team. Still subject to a non-compete agreement with Cigarette – which he’d bought back, then sold again in 1982 – Aronow was forbidden from producing deep V monohulls. So he commissioned a design from Michael Peters that split a V in two to create a catamaran. Given this unpromising start in life, the seven-ton, 11.9-metre Blue Thunder vessels acquitted themselves well. They were fast (more than 112km/h), good for interdiction activities (stable when boarding intercepted boats) and comparatively easy to drive. Yet deep V monohulls were now reaching 160km/h. Also, said Peters, “the Coast Guard drivers were left drowned in the wake of the offshore racers and the cocaine runners, who just had a different mentality come race time.”

The more problematic aspect was that Aronow additionally arranged to sell USA Racing Team, complete with the Blue Thunder contract, to Ben Kramer, who by now had drug smuggling convictions. It did not take the US Customs Service long to learn of this. They could not countenance procuring drug interdiction boats from a firm owned by a convicted smuggler and predictably moved to cancel the procurement contract. Aronow agreed to buy USA Racing Team back from Kramer, equally predictably for less than the consideration he’d received. Accounts of the dealings vary, but perhaps $2 million had been paid under the table in cash by Kramer when he bought the firm, using drug money. This sum, Aronow did not return. Herein lay the alleged motivation for Aronow’s murder.

The official record shows that, via a tip-off, police identified a mercenary street criminal named Bobby Young as the man who’d shot Aronow. Although witnesses failed to identify him in police line-ups, Young pled no contest to the shooting. Meanwhile, Kramer had been convicted of massive marijuana smuggling and money laundering, receiving multiple prison sentences including life without parole. More tips and leads pointed to Kramer as the man who’d ordered and paid for the hit.

The investigating detectives believed that Kramer was seeking to silence Young in jail, paying his legal bills, even possibly seeking to have Young killed. However, this “consciousness of guilt” made for a weak state’s case. Ultimately, Kramer pled no contest to second-degree murder. By this time – the mid 1990s – he was being kept in an isolation cell without, his lawyer claimed, adequate dental or medical care. “They had me in a cage for three years and nine months, with no daylight, no contact with human beings,” Kramer said.

Besides the state’s weak case, there were other, more fundamental doubts over whether Kramer had arranged to have Aronow shot. Kramer was hot tempered, the argument went; had he been sufficiently enraged by the USA Racing Team misfire to kill Aronow, he would have done so in 1985, whereas Kramer reportedly remained respectful towards Aronow until the end.

Separately, there were rumours that Aronow may have been assisting law enforcement, even becoming an informant – or at least that, in early 1987, he was about to be subpoenaed to give evidence about the USA Racing Team transactions. Five days after his murder, The Washington Post reported that a Customs official described Aronow as “co-operative” when Aronow had been approached for information about one of his clients. If the real motive for Aronow’s murder was him turning informant, surely others (on the wrong side of the law) were potential suspects, too?

Over the years, theories have developed to involve the Chicago mob, Colombian drug kingpins, cuckolded husbands or just a random shooter. Back in 1981, Time quoted a legal researcher living in Miami as saying: “I see people walking down the streets openly carrying guns, some in their hands, others in their holsters. You don’t dare honk your horn at anybody; you could end up dead.”

Certainly it is less difficult now to see how, in 1980s Miami, the murder of a man as magnetic as Aronow could garner 140 suspects at the Metro-Dade Police Department, each with the apparent motive, means and opportunity to have the “King of Thunderboat Row” gunned down in broad daylight. Bobby Young, the convicted shooter and the man who might have provided definitive answers, died in jail in 2009. The murder may forever remain a mystery.

Today, Thunderboat Row is a transformed, gentrified enclave. Only Magnum and a marina (not Fort Apache) are still here. The rest of NE 188th Street is covered with blocks of expensive condos promising comfortable waterside living. The boats tend to be smaller, more sedate, more family-oriented. At the east end of the street is now the Aventura Arts & Cultural Center; further east, across Biscayne Bay, on oceanside Sunny Isles Beach, stands the Porsche Design Tower. It lets you transport your luxury car up  to the safety of your own unit, even as crime rates have dropped.

Cigarette, Donzi and other Aronow-conceived brands live on, as do the Miami to Key West race and offshore poker runs. But nothing compares with the go-fast scenes of the 1960s, 1970s and climatic 1980s. Those times can only be likened to the Old West: the Marlboro Man; the weed-strewn strip with its pioneers and settlers; the freebooters from south of the border bringing their lawlessness and loot and the law of the gun.

Michael Peters concludes, “If you want to find anything comparable today, you need to look elsewhere, maybe to the ‘ final frontier’ – Blue Origin, SpaceX, Bezos and Musk.” He pauses.  “In the boating world, we won’t see the likes of Don Aronow again.”

First published in the October 2022 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue. 

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Is Speed Kills a true story? The real-life speedboat racer and multimillionaire Don Aronow

John Travolta stars as Don Aronow (renamed 'Ben Aronoff' in 'Speed Kills'), the speedboat racer and multimillionaire murdered in 1987.

‘Speed Kills’ the film loosely based on the life of Don Aronow (‘Ben Aronoff’ in the movie) has been released on Netflix US .

American Don Aronow was a designer, builder and racer of speedboats. He launched Magnum Marine in Florida in 1966 and created the Cigarette, Donzi, Formula and Cary speedboats.

His boats went on to win a whopping 350 offshore races and Aronow himself was a two-time world champion and three-time US champion of offshore racing .

His boats, success and wealth also attracted trouble. Drug traffickers used his Cigarette speedboats to move cocaine.

Aronow was murdered in Miami in his car by hitman Robert ‘Bobby’ Young on 3 February 1987. He was 59.

Young was allegedly paid $60,000 to kill Aronow by Benjamin Barry Kramer, an offshore race boat builder and co-defendant who had a dispute with the multimillionaire and racer.

The film, described as ‘Wolf of Wall Street on boats’ was released in 2018 but received a lukewarm reception with eminent film website Rotten Tomatoes giving it an average rating of only 2.6/10 and IMDB 4 out of 10.

Report by Stef Bottinelli

Hit man’s death closes notorious Aronow case

In 1987, hit man Robert ‘Bobby’ Young shot powerboat mogul Don Aronow in his Mercedes sports car. Young, paid $60,000 for the contract murder, achieved such notoriety for the gangland-style killing that he secured a place in the pantheon of South Florida assassins.

Young, 60, died on Tuesday 31 March 2009 at Jackson Memorial Hospital, apparently of natural causes, authorities said.

“He finally got what he deserved from a higher authority, the death sentence,” said retired Miami-Dade police Detective Greg Smith, lead investigator of the Aronow murder.

Miami-Dade police pursued the ambush slaying for six years, interviewing terrified witnesses and investigating a twisting path of coincidences, murders, mistresses, mobsters, dopers, spies, jealous boyfriends and snitches before finally stumbling upon Young.

“Robert was a cold-blooded killer. He was full of bravado, and very much into himself,” said Assistant State Attorney Gary Winston, who put Young away for Aronow’s slaying in 1995.

“He would love to talk and reveal in what he had done. He was cold and heartless.”

Young had been incarcerated at the Federal Detention Centre in downtown Miami before recently falling ill. He served his sentence for the Aronow murder in Oklahoma, at the same time he was incarcerated in federal prison for cocaine trafficking.

He returned to South Florida in 2001, having fled Oklahoma while on parole before being arrested in Broward County in October 2001 after his ex-brother-in-law gave federal agents his address.

Young was found to have a revolver and $75,000 on him.

After being sentenced to ten years for having the handgun, he was recorded on the Federal Detention Centre phone talking to an associate about planting an assault rifle on his former brother-in-law, according to court records.

“I was very upset I was betrayed by my own family,” Young told a federal agent in 2004.

“I was just broken-hearted and figured maybe justice could be done. I could set him up by putting the rifle into his vehicle and having him arrested. ‘Let him feel the same pain, suffering and fate that I was feeling,” he said.

In January, Young was sentenced to a 27-year prison term for owning the assault rifle. It was but the latest felony conviction in the life of a serial criminal, whose brazen violence was part of the so-called Cocaine Cowboy era in Miami. Young boasted of involvement with gun-running, prostitution rings and violence during the 1970s.

Later, he was thrown in a Cuban jail after island authorities found him on an offshore racing boat with 300 pounds of marijuana. In 1984, he was released along with 21 other Americans in a deal engineered by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

Back in Miami, Young hooked up with a group of dope peddlers who considered themselves a new version of the 1960s Dixie Mafia crime group. He was convicted for the 1984 murder of Dixie Mafia member John ‘Big Red’ Panzavecchia, in a drug deal gone wrong.

After he shot Big Red dead, Young took the man’s solid gold Rolex, former Miami homicide Detective Nelson Andreu remembered on Tuesday.

“Bobby took it as a prize and was wearing it when we arrested him,” Andreu said. “Looking back, Young was lucky to escape the electric chair.”

In 1995, he pleaded no contest to the contract hit of Aronow, the powerboat king. He had cut a deal with state prosecutors that spared him the electric chair and ensured he would never testify against Benjamin Barry Kramer, offshore race boat builder and co-defendant who allegedly paid Young $60,000 to hit Aronow.

In 1996, Kramer, who once owned a casino and raced powerboats, pleaded no contest to ordering the killing of his rival, Aronow. Kramer, already serving a life sentence on federal drug-smuggling charges, received 19 years in prison – the same time amount of time as Young.

Aronow, 59, a rich and handsome millionaire among the powerboat set, was killed Feb. 3, 1987, outside his USA Racing office in 188th St, Miami – the road dubbed Thunderboat Alley Aronow made famous with his Formula, Donzi, Magnum and Cigarette power boats.

Aronow left his office in his white Mercedes, shortly after visiting a rival boat dealership owned by Kramer. He pulled alongside a Lincoln car with tinted windows. It was from here the hit man opened fire, three bullets striking the powerboat star.

On Tuesday, Smith, the retired detective, called Aronow’s widow, Lillian, to break the news.

“He certainly deserved more than what he got for the death of her husband,” he said.”She was relieved knowing he died in custody.”

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• Mar 9, 2021

Innovators in Boating - N.E. 188th Street & The Famous "Thunderboat Row" (Part Two)

By: Richard Crowder

Last week, in Part One of the story of Thunderboat Row, we explored how the legendary Don Aronow became interested in the new thrill of offshore boating and racing and in 1962, established Formula Boats on a desolate dusty dead-end road in North Miami called NE 188th Street.

We left off with Aronow’s creation and subsequent sale of Formula, then Donzi, then Magnum, his creating of Cigarette, and the start of other builders setting up shop at what was fast becoming known as Thunderboat Row. At the same time, the street was gaining both an admiring but perhaps seedy reputation for some of its underbelly activities involving drug-running. We now look at some of the other builders that called NE 188th street home and the eventual decline of Thunderboat Row.

in 1974. Pepe Nunez, to be joined later by his son Jo, set up Pantera Powerboats on Thunderboat Row. Pantera V-bottoms went on to win many national and world offshore racing titles. Most Panteras are easily recognizable by the hullside graphics featuring a pair of fluorescent green cat’s eyes . Pantera was one of the first makers to utilize the new developing technologies of Kevlar® and carbon fibre in the layup process.

Bob Saccenti, who had known Aronow back in New Jersey, moved south and started working for him at Cigarette Racing Team. With Aronow’s help and blessing, Saccenti started Apache Powerboats in 1978 across and down 188th Street from Cigarette. Aronow had provided Saccenti with the hull and deck moulds which became one of the winningest V-bottom race boats -- the Apache 41, the first of which was the famous #69 Apache Warpath.

Saccenti took in Ben Kramer as a partner in 1982 and immediately set up a race team with Kramer driving and Saccenti on throttles. They won many races and took many titles with Saccenti becoming recognized as one of the best-ever throttlemen.

In 1986 they built the first triple-engine 47-foot Apache Superboat, which became the go-to V-bottom in the Superboat racing class. In the meantime, Kramer built Fort Apache Marina on Thunderboat Row with capacity for two hundred boats in slips and dry-stack storage, as well as a classy restaurant.

After Aronow sold Cigarette Racing Team in 1982, he immediately established USA Racing Team, again on Thunderboat Row. He proceeded to build stealth-looking 39-foot Blue Thunder catamarans for the US Customs Service for hunting down drug smugglers. Then Vice-President George H.W. Bush actually did some prototype testing of the boats with Aronow. Much later I was given a brief ride on one of these at one of the offshore races. The boat was all business.

This caused quite a stir in the go-fast boat world as Aronow had also sold boats to some who used them for drug running since they could outrun most police vessels. Now Aronow had designed and built a boat that would go even faster and be able to run down the smugglers. Those who had previously purchased boats from him for nefarious purposes were not at all pleased.

In 1986, he was negotiating with Kramer to buy his USA Racing Team, and it is said that some cash had come to Aronow as part of the intended sale. But Ben Kramer had also delved into other pursuits that had him indicted for multiple serious drug offences. Because of this, US Customs Services indicated they would not purchase Blue Thunder boats if Kramer was involved.

So the sale was nullified but it is said that Aronow held onto the cash advance. On February 3rd 1987, Don Aronow was shot and killed in his car on Thunderboat Row between his office and Saccenti’s shop. Allan “Brownie” Brown was one of the first on the scene followed closely by Bob Saccenti. The murder remained unsolved for nearly a decade until Ben Kramer was finally charged with hiring a hitman named Robert Young to do the deed. Both were jailed for extended terms.

When I visited N.E. 188th St. in the late 1980s, within a year after the 1987 assassination of Aronow, the manufacturers located there included Magnum, Cigarette, Apache, Pantera, Tempest, and Cougar, along with the huge Fort Apache Marina and what was then the recently vacated Formula facility. At the head of the channel was Hi-Lift Marina, at the time the largest dry-stack storage facility and capable of fork-lifting 35-footers three levels up.

The street already had an unsavory reputation of drug-running in those days, and on that trip I was shown where Aronow was shot while sitting in his Mercedes. I talked to Bob Saccenti and toured Fort Apache Marina, ate in the restaurant there, and saw the 41 Apache Warpath #69. Almost all of the manufacturers that were there on the street at that time have now moved elsewhere and high and low-rise housing developments have taken over the area.

I was invited back to Thunderboat Row in 1993 during the Miami Boat Show. The purpose was to visit Bobby Moore’s Custom Marine high performance rigging shop located in the original Cigarette facility. I sat across the desk from Bobby in what was Aronow’s original office and maybe even Aronow’s desk. The walls were beautiful wood paneling with rounded corners and Bobby jokingly wondered if maybe when the building was torn down there might be cash stuffed in the rounded corners.

Bobby Moore was a multi-time world offshore racing champion and was considered one of the world’s best-ever throttlemen at the time. He had maintained boats for both Dick Bertram and Don Aronow and is credited with “inventing” the throttleman position in racing. I had met and interviewed Bobby many times in the past at races. He was a soft-spoken and true gentleman and always had time for you. And boy did he know his stuff. I was at his shop with the specific purpose to set a world speed record and I had invited my good friend and now fellow BoatBlurb writer, Captain Bill Jennings, himself a past world champion offshore racer, to join me.

The idea was to take an off-the-shelf production boat, powered by off-the-shelf production engines and propellers and setup for pleasure boating, and set an unofficial world speed record as the 'World’s Fastest Production Pleasure Boat.' The boat was a new 40-ft Douglas Skater pleasure catamaran powered by one of the very first pairs of Mercury Racing 900SC production engines coupled with regular Number Six outdrives. The package had been purchased by a husband and wife, and Bobby Moore was rigging it all up for them.

Bobby had just installed a new prop set that morning and thought the new choice would gain a few more miles per hour. I must say I was a bit nervous, but I trusted Bobby Moore’s experience and know-how implicitly. With a full load of Bobby at the helm, Bill, myself, and the husband and wife owners on board, we set off onto the Intracoastal headed south toward Miami where the channel was fairly wide.

We had to make several passes at well below full throttle due to the sighting ahead of large sportfishing yachts churning up wakes of six feet or more. Finally, we had a clear path and Bobby went for full throttle and optimum trim. Captain Bill had a handheld GPS and I took a picture of the screen as we topped out at maximum RPM at 141.3 mph (227 km/h) with five people on board. We all agreed that made for a fairly fast production pleasure boat and the boat owners were very pleased. And yes, it was an unofficial world speed record and it has been surpassed many times since then. As Mercury’s production engines increased in horsepower and production boats became stronger and lighter the standards have gone much higher with time.

It is sad for me to report that Bobby Moore died last year at his home in North Carolina. His son Billy, himself a seasoned and respected and winning throttleman, has taken over Bobby Moore’s Custom Marine on N.E. 188th Street, which is now a marina as well as a custom rigging shop. Still located in the old Cigarette facility, it along with quiet Hi-Lift Marina at the head of the street are sadly all that remain of what was once busy and notorious Thunderboat Row. Except for the vivid memories of all who set foot there in its heyday.

For a little extra throwback, you can watch the 2009 documentary "Thunder Man" below:

#culture #innovatorsinboating #formula #formulaboats #cigarette #donzi #apache #pantera

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VÉHICULE Presents: Don Aronow, King of Offshore Powerboating

The killing of Don Aronow: arguably offshore powerboating's most controversial incident. Excerpt from Paradise Lost: The Rise and Fall of Ben Kramer . Read the full story in the  VÉHICULE .

Read all about the real story of Don Aronow, founder of Magnum Marine , Cigarette , Donzi and Formula  (amongst others) in the 30 page VÉHICULE feature story.  Order here .

VÉHICULE'S CONTENTS ARE THE PRODUCTS OF INTENSIVE, DIRECT SCRUTINY MAKING FOR A CONCISELY TAILORED CATALOG OF AVANT-GARDE TRANSPORTATION. IT ISN'T INTENDED FOR EVERYONE. LEAVE YOUR E-MAIL TO BE THE FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT VÉHICULE RELEASES.

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Aronow Introducing Unlimited Catamaran

• Posted by Hydroplane Museum on January 3, 2016 at 9:30pm

Buck Thornton was the driver of the Aronow Unlimited in this photo published on Aug. 1, 1982.

By Joanne A. Fishman

Reprinted from The New York Times , June 28, 1981

For 17 years, Don Aronow has been the biggest kid on the block. And why not? It's his block, after all, the swampy stretch of 188th Street in Florida's North Miami Beach. With his fortune made in real estate, Aronow returned to the first love of his youth -fast boats. And he started on 188th Street by creating a Formula boat company.

Since then, Aronow has formed a string of high-performance boat companies - Donzi, Magnum, Cigarette and Squadron XII - all on the same block. No matter that he stopped racing offshore power boats 11 years ago after capturing two world and three national titles. Aronow's influence in the sport dominates. But now, the 53-year-old designer and builder has merged his Squadron boats with his recently reacquired Cigarette Racing Team, and he's preparing to invade new territory - the unlimited hydroplane circuit.

Aronow, in conjunction with Gary Garbrecht, the former head of Mercury Marine's racing program, has created an unlimited hydroplane that is revolution in design as well as power. Tests are scheduled to begin on Lake Havasu, in Arizona, this week with the craft, called the Aronow Unlimited, expected to make its debut on the thunderbolt circuit by the end of July. Buck Thornton, a tunnel boat driver from Richmond, VA., has been named the driver.

The unlimited hydroplanes are the fastest boats afloat. Riding on the tips of two sponsons and half a propeller, they are capable of reaching speeds over 200 miles an hour. Traditionally they are powered by a single, massive World War II airplane engine capable of generating 3,000-horsepower.

The Aronow Unlimited is the first unlimited of the catamaran design. It is considerably lighter than the traditional unlimiteds and is powered by two engines, supercharged Keith Black Chryslers producing 1,170-horsepower each, and connected to MerCruiser sterndrives. In test runs last year with smaller Cosworth engines, according to Aronow, the 30-foot-long craft reached 175 miles an hour on the straightaway but was sluggish on the turns. Now with the larger engines and the sterndrives, for greater low-end torque, the new craft is expected to roar around the ovals with a lap speed of 140 m.p.h. This would be fast enough to upset the unlimited establishment, because the fastest recorded lap is the 140.6 m.p.h. set by Bill Muncey in Atlas Van Lines last year.

To change from offshore powerboats to the unlimiteds, Aronow said, ''is like changing from Formula One to stockcar racing. And to master both is very difficult.'' Part of the impetus for the shift is that the deep V hull, which Aronow had developed to perfection in offshore competition, has reached its maximum potential.

''You can't grow anymore with the deep V because we're limited to the power we have,'' he explained. Instead, Aronow sees the offshore circuit evolving into two-boat teams, with a deep V craft used in rough water and a catamaran in calm water.

''I love the rough water,'' Aronow said. ''There is a thrill about going out in water as rough as possible and racing. To me that was offshore racing. Now they call the races off if it's rough, and they race in lakes. If they want to go calm-water racing, let's go to unlimiteds. And that's what I'm doing.''

For Aronow, who began racing Jersey speed skiffs as a teen-ager growing up on the New Jersey Shore, the challenge with the unlimiteds is to find new ways of adapting power to hull shape. As he points out, super-charged engines, sterndrives and catamaran designs have been around for quite a while, ''but no one has been able to put them together before and make it work.''

From 188th Street, production versions of the Cigarette race boats are shipped to kings and Presidents. Vice-Presidents, too. George Bush just had his re-powered. Owners include the rich and famous (such as Ringo Starr, Vitas Gerulaitis and H. Ross Perot) as well as drug smugglers. The sale of Cigarette T-shirts and jackets alone is bringing in $100,000 a year.

But for the biggest kid on the block, the fun isn't in the ledgers. It's on the race course. And that's where he's headed once more.

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To add..... The failed success of the Aronow was the Mercruiser stern drives. We went through them like eating potato chips.  Even though I was just a full-time crew on the Seebold craft, I always wondered why we didn't use the Arneson Surface Drive.  We would have blown the doors off the competition with them mounted on the boat.

Hey! I remember the Aronow!!  We were in Howard Arneson's shop installing the KB Hemi's. ( at the time I worked for Howard)... Howard allowed me to take a leave of absence to haul the Aronow to all the races. ( We went to Tri-Cities first)....  I know that boat very well. ( I am trying to develop old negatives of the boat)

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The Risk Takers Part 3: Don Aronow

Don Aronow created an all-conquering, epoch-making race boat resulted in the adoption of a generic name for all boats of that type thereafter.

In this, the third part of our four-part series, Danny Casey examines the life, times and shocking, brutal death of the man who put the gloss, glitz and glamour into the then gritty but nascent sport of offshore powerboat racing – a man whose creation of an all-conquering, epoch-making race boat resulted in the adoption of a generic name for all boats of that type thereafter. The boat was known as “The Cigarette” and the man behind it created a legacy, an empire and maybe even a mystique that still resonates today.

Northeast 188 th Street, North Miami was a bland, seedy industrial area made up of nondescript boatbuilding facilities and allied fabrication and engineering businesses. It was the sort of stark industrial area one would also find in Auckland, Sydney or Los Angeles. However, NE 188 th Street also had an imposing and impressive alternative name that belied its stark environs. It was, and still is, known as Thunderboat Row and was so named because it housed, along both sides of its short length, several companies involved in the building of high-performance offshore powerboats. And nearly all these enterprises were spin-offs of the original company started in 1963, in that very street, by Donald Joel Aronow.

In the drug-fuelled, hedonistic Miami of the mid-late 1980s, the only excitement in this otherwise nondescript street was when the magnificent creations from these factories were craned into the canals that flanked the dead-end road for testing. But other than the start-up barks of powerful engines that then idled and lolled out into open water, the street went about its regular business of constructing very fast boats in purpose-built facilities.

On Tuesday, February 3 rd , 1987, an otherwise unremarkable Miami winter day, a man walked unannounced into the office of Don Aronow’s newest boat company, USA Racing Team, on the premise that he was there on behalf of his boss, who was extremely wealthy and could not therefore be identified. This representative for the mystery buyer was muscular, well-built and very tall, at maybe six feet four inches. He looked sturdier, fitter and heavier than Aronow, who was himself six feet three and 220-plus pounds (in US parlance).

The visitor said his boss wanted him to talk to Aronow about purchasing a custom-built boat. Aronow said that that would be no problem; he’d gladly take the guy’s boss’s money and build whatever the boss wanted, but it’d be better if he talked with the boss directly. As the conversation progressed and it became apparent that the name of the visitor’s mystery employer would not be forthcoming, Aronow asked the visitor for ID and the guy made a great flourish of reaching round to his rear pocket for his wallet. “Whaddya know,” he said. “Musta left it in the car.”

Aronow then asked him his name, and the guy answered: “Jerry Jacoby.” Aronow knew Jerry Jacoby well, as Jacoby had been the 1981 UIM World Offshore Champion and the 1982 US Offshore Champion – but this visitor was not Jerry Jacoby. Aronow, who had seemed preoccupied and edgy for weeks, rushed to leave and fobbed “Jacoby” off on his sales manager, telling the sales manager to take the visitor out to the yard to show him the boats. But the guy had no interest in seeing any boats and briskly exited the premises.

Some minutes later, seemingly rattled and distracted, Aronow left the office, got into his white Mercedes-Benz 560 SL convertible and drove the short distance up the street to see a friend, Bob Saccenti, who was also a business competitor, at Saccenti’s boatbuilding company, Apache Performance. Saccenti had been injured in a recent powerboat race and Aronow wanted to see how he was doing.

After some minutes schmoozing and trading friendly – albeit rather forced – banter and jibes, Aronow got back into the Benz to return to his own factory.

As Aronow pulled out of Apache Performance and turned right to return to USA Racing Team, a Lincoln Town Car approached from the opposite direction. The Lincoln (some said it was black while others swore powder blue) slowed and the driver’s window glided down. An arm discreetly signalled Aronow to stop, so he drew alongside the Lincoln and braked – both drivers’ windows side-by-side. A very brief conversation, measured in seconds, ensued, and the driver of the Lincoln extended his arm, in which there was a serious firearm: a semiautomatic .45 calibre Colt. Six shots were fired at Aronow, five of which hit him (one in the groin), with the sixth tearing its way through the passenger door.

Eyewitnesses say the Lincoln pulled away, smoothly and purposefully, but not overly rapidly, and then drove over a patch of waste ground before escaping through a warren of back streets with not a single traffic light before the freeway.

Aronow was slumped in the car with the engine screaming madly, his foot jammed hard on the accelerator and the transmission in neutral. This was strange but, as his wife later posited, would have been because of his background with boats. Whenever he came to a halt in his car, he always slid the automatic transmission lever from “D” to “N” – just as one would do when idling a boat. His wife maintained that if he hadn’t adopted this peculiar, boat-inspired, shift-into-neutral practice, he would have been able to get away rapidly and cheat death – but, as will become clear, that would only have postponed his demise. So badly ripped apart was Aronow’s body that paramedics at the scene said that the fluid from the IV drips was running straight out through the wounds and onto the street.

Leaving aside, for the present, his gruesome end, Aronow, up until then, had lived a charmed, healthy and wealthy life. He was in the vanguard of the “snow birds” from New York and New Jersey (Aronow was from Brooklyn, NY) who migrated to Miami in the early ‘60s, just as the town was beginning to recover from straitened times in the late ‘50s. The Mob (i.e. the Mafia) had had great plans for Miami, as it was the nearest US city to Batista’s Cuba – Batista, of course, being the dictator who allowed the Mafia to build and run casinos in Havana while palming his share. But then Castro deposed him and that was the end of the Mob’s Vegas of the South.

Aronow had done well in the construction industry in New Jersey in the 1950s. In one of his early deals as a young man, he bought a tatty parcel of land on which he built 10 small “starter” houses. Each house sold for $14,500 and Aronow made a profit of $4,500 per house. Not vast sums of money even then, but it showed an eye for a buck and the ability to make a quick killing before moving on to another deal. However, in the north-eastern states at that time, anybody with any knowledge of the construction industry would have known that there was great power held and wielded by the labour unions, and if one wanted to get ahead, one had to know how to deal with the unions. And backing the unions was another altogether more menacing, dangerous entity: the Mob.

Aronow was barely in his mid-thirties when he decided to decamp to Miami in semi-retirement, and he began to hang out with a powerboating crowd – people like Dick Bertram, Sam Griffith and Dick Genth. He developed an initially mild interest in offshore powerboat racing, participating with moderate success in boats he had bought. Eventually the bug bit and he hooked up with two legendary boatbuilders, Jim Wynne and Walt Walters. Land was cheap in Miami at the time and, in 1963, he built a boat plant on a scrubby piece of waste ground at NE 188 TH Street. He called the company Formula Marine.

This marked the birth of one of the most successful, venerable and much-copied V-hull powerboats of all time. This boat, the Formula 233, designed by Wynne and made production-ready by Walters (it’s debatable if Aronow himself ever had much creative or design output into any of his boats), became a soaring success in terms of both sales and competition, and Aronow appointed a dealer network but gave them paltry margins so they couldn’t discount the boat – thereby keeping both residuals and brand recognition high.

Aronow realised that whilst there was a living to be made building boats, the real money came from pumping up the product and its brand equity and then selling the company. And this is what he did with Formula after only one year – he sold it to Thunderbird. With the deal done, he bought another parcel of tatty land on NE 188 TH Street, and started his second company, Donzi – another boat brand with a racy and exotic name. By 1966, Donzi had been sold to Teleflex and Aronow went on to buy a further block of land on the Row and start yet another boat company, Magnum.

Magnum was then sold in 1968, to Apeco, but Aronow now found himself, for the first time, having to rigidly adhere to a strict non-compete clause which had been imposed by Apeco. To circumvent this condition, Aronow appropriated the name of a willing friend, Elton Cary, and built a new range of boats under the Cary name. This was when the legendary “Cigarette” branding first appeared, as the first two models, the 28 and 32, were named after a famous rum runner’s launch of that name from the Prohibition era.

After Cary/Cigarette, there was Squadron Marine and then, finally, USA Racing Team – and each of these moves involved selling the previous company and buying yet more land on the Row to start another one. Aronow could be hard, combative and mean, as the buyer of one of his previous entities discovered. The buyer was loading a boat in the yard with a forklift one day, when Aronow and a bailiff arrived to repossess the machine. “You can’t do this.” The new owner protested. “I bought this company and all its assets, lock, stock and barrel.” Aronow thrust the original inventory list in the guy’s face and said, “But not the forklift – it’s not listed on this sheet.” And he was right. Every piece of plant and equipment was listed – except the forklift (worth maybe a paltry five or six thousand dollars). This indicates a mercenary and unsavoury side to Aronow’s character.

By the early 1980s, the words “Miami” and “narcotics” were intertwined and synonymous, and the TV show Miami Vice explored this fraught symbiosis in every episode. Everyone knew that the days of tramp steamers and fishing boats being used to transport and land drugs were over, and that go-fast boats were being used instead. In fact, the entire Miami-centric world of offshore powerboat always had the taint of drug money hanging over it, and when such superstar drivers as Joey Ippolito and George Morales were arrested and jailed for long stretches, that confirmed the speculation.

It is highly unlikely that Aronow was oblivious to the machinations of the offshore racing scene, as much of his product ended up in the hands of those who ferried narcotics and those legal entities who attempted to apprehend them. By now, Aronow was operating his latest and – although he didn’t know it – final venture, USA Racing Team, which he ostensibly ran alongside a powerboat racer and high school dropout (and, by all accounts, a borderline moron) named Ben Kramer. But it was complicated, as Aronow had supposedly sold USA Team Racing to Kramer (with a sizeable sum of money reputedly passed under the table by Kramer to Aronow), so Aronow was merely the company figurehead. This was a futile attempt to bestow some respect on Kramer, who was a major-league drug smuggler and who was wholly unfit to operate a legitimate enterprise.

A further complication came in the form of the then vice president of the United States, George H.W. Bush. A personal friend of Aronow, he had always owned Cigarette boats. Whilst Bush was a mainly insipid vice president, Ronald Reagan had appointed him as his personal drugs tsar and it was Aronow to whom Bush turned for assistance with the purchase of high-speed interdiction craft that could chase down the drug runners’ boats. Notwithstanding the fact that Bush and Aronow were friendly, a personal entreaty of this nature was most strange in relation to a high-value government contract, as such purchases are always made at a national level through an official tender process. However, Bush, after a visit to Miami and a day schmoozing on the water with Aronow, tacitly awarded Aronow the contract. But there were two problems.

The first problem was that the tunnel-hulled boat Aronow cobbled up for US Customs – the first of what Bush called the “Blue Thunders” – was a total aberration. It was a monohull cut along the length of the keel and “peeled” open. The open side of each of the two (now extremely narrow) hulls was

glassed in and both hulls were pushed slightly apart so that a deck could be added. This was supposedly a catamaran but the final product was the enlarged equivalent of two side-by-side kayaks with a pantry door strapped lengthwise over them. Consequently, the tunnel was so narrow that there was no aerodynamic lift and the running surfaces of the hulls were so knife-edge narrow that the boat had no hydrodynamic lift either.

This boat, when fitted with two 440 hp MerCruisers and fast but fragile TRS drives, could manage no more than 56 MPH – compared with drug-running boats that cruised in the high-70s. In fact, the engines had to work so hard to plane and push the boat, and the TRS legs had to withstand so much strain and heat from trying to keep a boat with virtually no flat surface area on the plane, that failures of both items were measured in weeks, not months.

The second problem, however, was much more serious: Ben Kramer. Bush eventually found out that Kramer, a drug baron, was the true owner of USA Racing Team, and yet here he was on the verge of being awarded a contract for drug interception vessels – a sick and ironic joke!

Bush then contacted Aronow, unequivocally telling him that the deal was off unless, or until, Aronow bought Kramer out of the company and took back control. Aronow ostensibly did this, but whether in fact it ever actually happened is still a matter of conjecture today. But regardless of Aronow’s putative repurchasing of the company, he almost certainly never gave Kramer back the reputed under-the-table sum from the initial sale.

The boat company improprieties, bad as they were, were not insurmountable for Aronow – while his reputation and standing with Bush, for one, would have been tarnished, he would have lived to fight another day with myriad other deals. Where Aronow’s life gets murky (and there have been countless books, articles and theses written about it, all of which are plausible but all of which are nonetheless conjecture) is in his dealings with union – and by default Mob – activists, firstly in New Jersey and later in Miami. It is no secret that Aronow was acquainted with the venerable Mob boss, Meyer Lansky, and it is highly likely that, with all the drugs and drug money sluicing through Miami in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, large sums of that money would have been laundered through Aronow’s businesses – whether for legitimate purchases or not.

Two journalists, Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell, wrote the superb opus, Blue Thunder , a magnificent chronicle of almost 400 pages on Aronow’s life and death (boat talk is a relatively minor part of the book), and it is probably the definitive reference work on this subject. Throughout the book, the Mob are never far from centre stage and reliable reports of dons, capos and “wise guys” litter almost half the page count.

This book states that the Justice Department had prepared a subpoena for Aronow on February 2nd, 1987, in relation to organised crime, and that it was due to be served on him one day later, on February 3rd, the day of the murder. No one can say with certainty what really happened but, allegedly, someone in the Justice Department, with a connection to the Mafia, saw the subpoena on an adjacent desk and called the Mob. Aronow was going to be asked about a lot of deals and associates, and although he could have “taken the Fifth”, his silence would have been a tacit admission of complicity. So the Mob scrambled a hit team at the last minute – the well-built guy who entered Aronow’s office on the pretence of boat-shopping for his rich boss (and whose job it was to destabilise Aronow), plus the shooter who drove the Lincoln.

A no-account loser and career criminal named Bobby Young eventually pleaded no contest to the manslaughter of Aronow, saying that he acted on behalf of Ben Kramer, who was angry about having to return the business to Aronow and about Aronow retaining the original under-the-table money. Young had nothing to lose, as his plea on the Aronow matter would see him removed to a less harsh prison, and the sentence for Aronow’s manslaughter was concurrent, anyway, so he wouldn’t have to serve any more time. Kramer admitted nothing, but was in prison for life anyway, with no possibility of parole (where he remains, apparently, to this day).

However, it is pretty much accepted that neither man was associated – at least directly – with the murder of Aronow. Young in no way resembles the well-built guy (whose name is known) who appeared out of the blue in Aronow’s office, and neither he nor Kramer matches the description of the driver of the Lincoln (whose name is also known). The man from Aronow’s office is the biggest mystery of all – he went in, supposedly to flush out and destabilise Aronow, but fled and disappeared. And according to eyewitnesses, there was only one person – the shooter – in the Lincoln when Aronow was murdered, yet there were two people in it – the shooter and the big guy from Aronow’s office – when they foolishly stopped to seek directions earlier that day. What happened and why, and who really ordered and carried out the hit, and for what reason, was never, ever known – except to those involved.

As for Aronow’s boatbuilding legacy, he built (but probably had little input in designing) boats that were of, and for, their time. He created waterborne glitz, image and braggadocio and bestowed exciting and hubris-filled names on boats that were otherwise pretty mediocre in most key aspects – long, narrow-beamed, pared-to-the-bone, steep-deadrise hulls with no flattening-off aft to assist lift or maintain plane at lower speeds. His boats were power-hungry and brutal, and were fast purely due to the gargantuan horsepower installed rather than through any innovation or creativity in the rudimentary principles of hydrodynamic design.

And as for his legacy as a human being… probably a good guy to encounter for a back-slap and a faux insult in a boat club bar or for a photo-op at a boat race or on a boat show stand, but he straddled two entirely different worlds. There was a dark undercurrent that would have subsumed those unwise enough to get too close. The legacy and myth are much more appealing than the man.

CRUISING RUSSIA’S EAST COATS PART 3

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The Early Years of Magnum Marine’s Own, Don Aronow

Allan “Brownie” Brown publishes a special column for Powerboat Nation titled “ Brownie Bites .” Check out one of his recent features, showcasing a little history as it relates to Magnum Marine.

Don Got Down to Business

Photo Courtesy of PowerboatNation.com

In 1961, I was service manager at Challenger Marine, in North Miami, Florida. Challenger was a beautiful facility situated on Arch Creek, in the middle of nowhere. We were dealers for Chris Craft, Trojan (the boat, not the ribbed one), Boston Whaler, and Johnson outboards. These were trying times for boat yards. The Gummint had recently done away with most of the tax deductions for corporate boats and yachts. When I went to the Army in the spring of 1958, kicking and screaming, (When the Major asked if I had ever considered the violent overthrow of the United States government, I replied “Not until now!”) we had about forty painters and carpenters. All the big boats were made of tree wood, a miracle material. One could take a couple of tools into the woods, and come out with a boat! Corporations would buy a new Chris Craft cruiser in the Fall, use it over the Winter, and turn it in for repaint, repower, whatever. The sky was the limit.

When I returned from the wars (Stationed in NYC, I fought the battle of Broadway, took the Beanpot Bar single handed, and even scarier, I got my finger caught in a wedding band), the wood-butcher count was down to about ten. We had to work a little harder for business. We concentrated on service work, and I got promoted from outboard mechanic to service manager. One of my first customers was a tall, handsome, well tanned gentleman named Don Aronow . He was tan enough that one might suspect a woodpile malfunction. Don had just moved down from Jersey, and had sent his diving boat ”Claudia”, a 32 foot Pederson Viking skiff, to our yard for launching. Don was brutally handsome, funny, well dressed, a big tipper, and the best swordsman that I have ever met. That first day, he was dressed in a silk shirt, gabardine slacks, leather sandals, a planter’s straw hat, and smoking a Cheroot. We immediately became strangers. We were both about 6’2” and change, 225 pounds, but Don somehow had rearranged his 225 in a different pattern. He was 2 or 3 inches wider at the shoulder, and 3 or 4 inches smaller at the waist. He was very interested in offshore racing, women, money, spearfishing and having fun in general. One of his spearfishing pals was Frank Satenstein, Director of the famous “Jackie Gleason Show”, filmed every week on Miami Beach. We used to hang out there, and drink with Jackie.

Don wanted to be involved in the boat business, offshore racing, or anything that was different from being a builder in New Jersey. He moved to Bay Harbor, on Miami Beach, and drove back and forth in a new chocolate brown Rolls Royce. He told me a story about being stopped by a motorcycle cop on the Broad Causeway, connecting the mainland to the beach. The motorcycle cop, John O’Mara, said “Sir, you are fifty dollars over the speed limit.” Don gave him the fifty. Later that afternoon, O’Mara stopped him again, with the same line. Aronow said “I will bet you a twenty that I wasn’t.” O’Mara said “Sir, my pride will not allow me to accept that bet!”

Don wasted no time in gathering a circle of “boaty” friends. Dave Stirrat, Sam Sarra, Cal Connell, Howard Abbey, Jake Trotter, Buddy Smith, Stu Jackson, and several others. He was a ringleader. He decided to be a boat builder! He went to Dave Davis, at Sea Bird Boats, and bought three or four empty black 23’ vee hulls. His idea of building, at that point, was to have them covered with teak. He assembled a motley crew of boat yard guys, and put the first two boats together. When he showed them to his new friends, we hooted him off the dock. It may have been at that point that he decided to jump in with both feet.

He built a small factory on a desolate street in North Miami Beach. The factory was so far into the boonies that you could only see one other building from the dock except for Florida Wire Products across the canal, and Oolite Prestress across the street. He commissioned Jim Wynne and Walt Walters to design the Formula 233. Don showed me the plans for the boat, and asked me to get Challenger Marine to be the local dealer. No problem, as I was the General Manager at that point. The Formula was a roaring success. Don did everything against the grain of the boat business. He priced the boat double any other 23’ boat, at $7985, cut the dealer discount to point that it was impossible to discount, and put together a ten boat racing team on other people’s money! I raced on the team, and in 1964, Bertram boats finished one, two, three in the Miami-Nassau race, and the Formulas finished four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, with me winning class two, and Jim Wynne winning class three. Merrick Lewis immediately bought the company, freeing Don to dream up another barn-burner. Wynne Walters again. This time: Donzi Marine, with me as sales manager/whipping boy.

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This article was originally posted on PowerboatNation.com .

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clock This article was published more than  37 years ago

THE VIOLENT DEATH OF AN AMERICAN DREAM

Gunman ends boat maker don aronow's high-speed life on the street he built.

MIAMI -- It is known variously as Boatbuilders' Row, Gasoline Alley and Performance Street -- but, from this week on, it will forever be associated with the fast life and violent death of Don Aronow, a prototype of the American dream.

It was along this quiet street in a northern Miami suburb, next to the ocean that made his pulse race, that Aronow built the boats that turned him into a sporting legend. And it was here, at 4:05 p.m. last Tuesday, that he was fatally shot by a gunman who had hailed his white Mercedes car in the middle of the street.

The motive for Aronow's murder remains unclear, according to police. The possibilities seem as varied as his life, which friends portray as a constant quest for excitement in the form of women, money, success and, above all, speed.

A child of the Depression, Aronow, 59, founded several of the world's hottest speed-boat manufacturing companies. His technique was to establish a company's reputation by winning races (the world offshore powerboat championship twice and the U.S. championship three times), then sell the company for enormous profit and open a new one next door.

Gasoline Alley -- NE 188th Street as it is officially known -- bears the names of the companies the self-made multimillionaire from Brooklyn made famous: Magnum, Apache, Donzi, Cigarette and the U.S.A. racing team.

"It's incredible," said F.M. (Ted) Theodoli, president of Magnum Marine, which he bought from Aronow in 1972. "This is the street that Don created, and he died right here in the middle of it."

Like many boat builders along the street, Theodoli heard the gun shots ring out. He rushed to his window as the gunman was making his getaway in a dark blue Lincoln Continental. Other witnesses described the killer as a middle-aged white male with wavy, medium-length brown hair, a dark complexion and stubble around his chin.

As the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Aronow lay dying, one of the rescue squad members who rushed to the scene asked: "Who is this guy?"

"That's the king," came the response. "He built this entire street."

The incident was recalled at a memorial service for Aronow in Miami Thursday by a racing colleague and Florida eye surgeon, Robert Magoon. Describing his best friend's life as a "mixture of triumph and tragedy," Magoon added: "Don died as he would have wished -- with his boots on and with front-page headlines. Those of us who knew and loved him know that he could never have tolerated growing old and being sickly."

Aronow's customers included Vice President Bush, former Haitian dictator Jean Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, King Hussein of Jordan and King Juan Carlos of Spain. His boats also have ended up in the hands of leading drug syndicates.

After drug smugglers started making use of his 90 mph "Cigarette" boat in the mid-'70s, the Customs Service was forced to fight back. The weapon they chose was a 39-foot catamaran, also designed by Aronow, known as "Blue Thunder."

In an interview with The Miami News two hours before he was killed, Aronow joked that the Customs Service had bought 13 of the $150,000 catamarans "so they could catch smugglers using boats my other companies have made." But he said he never knowingly sold his boats to drug smugglers.

Aronow's career reads like a rags-to-riches story lived by a character who who was larger than life. His father, a taxicab owner whose family immigrated from Russia, went bankrupt during the Depression. Don Aronow's first job was as an usher working nights and weekends at the old Kingsway theater in Brooklyn.

After working as a gym teacher in the Bronx and serving in the Merchant Marine, he got started in the construction business. By 1956, at the age of 28, he had become a millionaire by building and selling thousands of tract houses in northern New Jersey. He retired to Florida in 1960 and bought himself a speed boat.

Unhappy with the boat's construction, Aronow decided to design one for himself. His first boat was made from wood and broke apart. His second, the Formula, was made of Fiberglas -- and was a winner. Suddenly, its creator found himself in the powerboat business.

The Formula was followed by Donzi (which Aronow, characteristically, named after himself) and the 36-foot Cigarette that most experts consider his masterpiece, named for a boat that used to hijack rum-runners during Prohibition. The idea of bad guys outracing other bad guys and seizing their fortune appealed to Aronow.

"Don was to offshore speed boats what Ben Franklin was to electricity," remarked an admiring Customs official. "I don't want to make him out to be the greatest boat builder in the world, but in that particular class of boats he was unequaled."

After the memorial service, friends and rivals recalled Aronow's dynamism and intense competitiveness. But they also mentioned his macho personality, rough manners and occasionally explosive temperament.

"Every day was an adventure for Don," said Bill Wishnick, the chairman of the Whitco Chemical Co. who was world offshore champion in 1971. "He was a fierce friend . . . but very outspoken. He would behave as if he didn't given a damn about anybody."

"He was a great bon vivant, a diamond in the rough," said Jim Wynne, Aronow's chief design engineer and creator of the popular marine outdrive, a device that combines advantages of inboard and outboard engines. "His language could be crude occasionally, but it fitted his personality."

Added Theodoli, the present owner of Magnum: "He was a hard-nosed guy. Some people loved and adored him. Others did not . . . . If he didn't like you, he could find a way to abuse you."

And then there were the women. Lean, handsome and rugged, Aronow was described by Magoon as a charismatic person who was both "a man's man" and a "woman's man."

After divorcing his first wife, Shirley, with whom he had three children, Aronow married Lillian Crawford, a Wilhelmina fashion model and socialite. He regarded this marriage as a part of his success story, boasting: "I'd never be married to a beautiful woman like Lillian if I hauled garbage for a living." She gave birth to their second child four months ago.

Aronow's boats -- sleek, powerful and built for high performance -- were another extension of his personality. Asked by a Miami Herald reporter for a one-word description of the boats he liked to build, he suggested, "Erotic." "Winning is a natural aphrodisiac," Lillian Aronow added.

Aronow quit boat racing in 1970. After two motorcycle crashes, six automobile wrecks and a dozen boating accidents, he was in considerable pain. That year, his eldest son, Mike, began using a wheelchair after nearly dying in an automobile crash. Father and son decided to branch out into horse racing and breeding.

One of their horses -- named Don Aronow -- won more than $200,000 in prize money. Others raced in the Kentucky Derby. The Aronow stables at Ocala, Fla., house some 40 two-year-olds at various stages of training.

In recent months, Aronow had spoken wistfully about returning to powerboat racing. According to his longtime friend and public relations man, John Crouse, he was planning to take part in the grueling 362-mile Miami-Nassau-Miami race this summer with a new 45-foot deep-V shaped boat. A five-year "no compete" contract that Aronow signed with the new owners of the Cigarette was about to expire.

The circumstances of Aronow's death mystified his friends and associates, who acknowledge that he made enemies with his business tactics but doubt that a competitor would have gone so far as to kill him.

Another line of speculation was that Aronow had run afoul of drug smugglers. Detectives estimate that of Dade County's 235 murders last year (one of the highest homicide rates in the nation), at least one-quarter were "drug-related." Customs officials described the boat builder as "cooperative" when approached for information about a client.

The problem with this theory is that Aronow's murder does not resemble a professional hit job. The gunman drove his own getaway car. He had attracted the attention of passers-by by hanging around in Gasoline Alley for some time before the murder. His escape could easily have been foiled if someone had managed to block the street's only exit.

"It looks to me like a crime of passion," said Crouse, who knew Aronow for over 20 years. "Here in Miami, you can get into a killing fight in a restaurant or at a stop light. It's quite possible that someone had a personal grudge against Don. He was an opinionated guy. If you got him riled, he would come at you."

Theodoli, explaining why he was convinced that the killing was unrelated to Aronow's boating business, said: "The symbolism of Don getting killed in this street is so obvious that it's stupid . . . . You have to look elsewhere. If I had wanted to kill him, I would have done it in New York."

BOAT RACER LIVED HARD AND FAST AND LOVED IT

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Like the thundering powerboats he designed — tough and loud but also beautiful — Don Aronow lived hard and fast and loved it.

Aronow was a bull of a man who swam a mile a day in the pool behind his Miami Beach home. He liked people, he had a lot of money, and he loved to laugh.

“Don was one of those guys that would walk into a room and you’d just love him because there was an aura about him,” said John Crouse, Aronow’s public relations man for 20 years.

“I’m going to miss him, and it really hasn’t hit me yet how much. There’s going to be a big hole there.”

Aronow, a junior high school gym coach from New York, made his first million after six years of building houses in New Jersey.

He “retired” in his early 30s to Miami because, he said, he had won at the construction game.

In Miami, he found a new game — offshore boat racing.

He won his first big race, the Miami-Nassau, in 1965. By 1967, he was world champion of the sport.

Crouse, who is organizing the Miami/Nassau/Miami Searace, said Aronow was planning to compete in the 362-mile event this July.

Norris “Nocky” House, Aronow’s throttleman and chief mechanic during his championship years, choked with emotion when he remembered the glory years.

“I worked for a man who had money and I had a little know-how,” said House, who lives in Wilton Manors. “Don was a brilliant, fantastic man. We made a good team.”

The racing took its toll on Aronow.

“There were times that he and I couldn’t even climb out of the boat onto the dock,” House said.

Aronow and House were almost killed in 1967 when their racing boat hit a wave off California, flew into the air and smashed into the bottom of a helicopter hovering near the ocean.

“In offshore racing, I gambled my life to win,” Aronow said in 1982.

Aronow’s personal quest drove him to create and sell five boat companies, including Donzi, Cigarette and Magnum. In the process, he made more than $10 million and developed some of the fastest high-performance boats ever built.

“He always said he had a better one in the barn,” Crouse said. “It was usually true.”

The Cigarette, a 35-foot narrow-beamed speedboat that can travel 70 mph on open sea, became a favorite of drug runners in Florida and also is considered the prototype of a new generation of U.S. Customs Service enforcement boats.

Aronow’s macho-nautical persona was a lot like the carefully nurtured image he developed for his creations.

“He had a lot of money, he liked to laugh and he was a lot of fun,” Crouse said. “Women just naturally flocked to him, and he probably couldn’t keep them away even if he wanted to.”

After the 1969 season, he quit boat racing to spend more time with his oldest son, Mike, who broke his back in a car accident. While helping his son cope with being paralyzed from the waist down, Aronow got into the horse racing business, from both sides.

He would go to races with his pockets stuffed with large bills, sometimes leaving with six-figure winnings.

On the course, Aronow horses — Mike began training horses after his accident — were the top winners at Gulfstream Park during the 1985 season. My Prince Charming had a shot at the Kentucky Derby in 1986 but missed the race because of a leg fracture.

Entrepreneur, boat design pioneer

BACKGROUND: Made first million in his early 30s after six years as a developer. “Retired” to Dade County at 31 and began designing and manufacturing high-performance speedboats. In early 1970s, got into racehorse business after son broke his back in auto accident. Sold boat-manufacturing companies for more than $10 million in early 1980s. Aronow’s clients included Vice President George Bush, the Shah of Iran, fugitive financier Robert Vesco, King Juan Carlos of Spain and former president of Haiti Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

INTERESTS: Offshore speedboat racer from 1965 to 1969. World champion in 1967 and 1969. Won a record eight major races in 1969, and was awarded gold medal as best powerboat driver in the world. Had horse race betting partnership with oldest son.

PERSONAL: A native of New York, he was 59, married and had five children.

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Aronow Boats for sale

1991 Aronow 39

Branford, Connecticut

Make Aronow

Category High Performance

Posted 2 Days Ago

This vessel has been maintained and is kept covered. Everything works as it should. The hull has new paint and antifouling. The sellers have recently reupholstered the engine hatch cover and the cockpit seating. There is a snap-in carpet for the cabin. Stock #302047 Opportunity to own a unique, fast Aronow boat! Fun for the entire family! Own a piece of history in this Don Aronow 39 boat, built in 1991 by Aronow Power Boats Inc. It has black Lucite doors and curved stairs as you enter the hatch to go below deck. Navy blue and mauve seating is offered in two chairs with a round table between, a long bench, and a berth. The small galley contains a mini-refrigerator. Inside the head are a sink, mirror, toilet, and cabinets. The cabinets house the electrical panels. On deck, the captain's and passenger's chair bottoms clip to sit, or unclip to stand. The cockpit has seating for 3 or 4, with two chair back tables and cup holders. A flip of a switch brings the engine hatch cover up to reveal the engines, batteries, and bilge pump. The sellers have restored it so that it's clean and runs as it should - fast. A cover is included in the sale, as well as updated features such as the Garmin GPS. Reason for selling is purchasing a different boat for fishing.

1990 47' Aronow, powered by twin 735hp Detroit Diesels

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Posted Over 1 Month

1990 47' Aronow, powered by twin 735hp Detroit Diesels connected to #12 Arneson surface drives with 5 blade Rolla props. The injectors have just been rebuilt and the drives have just been serviced. The cockpit deck, seating, and upholstery have just been replaced. Asking, $25,000 call 954-319-2881. Specs Builder: Aronow Powerboats Designer: Don Aronow LOA: 53' Beam: 12' Draft: 3'6" Displacement: 35,000lbs Fuel: (2) Aluminum tanks, 500 gallons total Water: 100 gallons Engines: (2) Detroit Diesel 8V92TA 735hp each Drives: 12# Arneson Surface Drives with 5 blade Rolla props Equipment Generator: Kohler 8E0ZD Trim Tabs: K-planes Controls: Dual handle cable Steering System: Power assisted hydraulic with cooling system Fire Suppression System: (2) halon units Windlass: Simpson Lawrence Searchlights: (2) ACR Electronic Compass: KVH VHF Radio: Uniden Radar: Raytheon R10XX GPS/Plotter: Raymarine SL530 Depth Sounder: Humminbird Battery Chargers: Sentry & Professional Mariner Swim platform: Aluminum, good Radar Arch: Aluminum, good Canvas: Bimini top with full isinglass enclosure Stereo: Kenwood 12 volt system Air Conditioning: (1) CruisAir unit Refrigeration: Norcold Microwave: GE Stereo: Kenwood 12 volt system Television: (1) Magnavox Pressure Pump: 12vdc pump Water Heater: Attwood MSD: Lectra San unit Head: Electric saltwater flush

2006 ARONOW

Category High Performance Boats

2006 ARONOW Need to sell ! Great Condition ! All offers welcomed ! Custom Aronow Cat open bow with 20 speaker stereo system. 2006 Mercury 250xs's outboard with 530 hours. Custom Wrap, Seating for 6 and LED's all inside the cockpit. Comes with dual axle trailer. Excellent beach boat with style!

1996 1996 Aronow Marine 32'

Madisonville, Louisiana

Make 1996 Aronow Marine

Model 32'

1996 1996 Aronow Marine 32' .  Hull only.    Boat is built to support out board motors.

1986 Aronow Boats (Rare! Only 279 Hours!)

Fort Myers, Florida

1986 Aronow Boats (Rare! Only 279 Hours!) FOR QUESTIONS CONTACT: ROB 239-677-0559 or This is a 1986 Don Aronow 39 USA CAT powered by Quad 2005 Mercury 275HP Verado Four Strokes with only 279 hours! In 2006 the entire boat including all rigging and paint was new. DETAILS: -Beam: 12ft -LOA: 39ft -(4) 275 HP Mercury Verados 2005 with 279 hours on them -Custom Structural Aluminum Bracket to hold engines -400 Gallon Gas Tank- 200 Each side -Custom Insulated Fish boxes run entire stern -Live Bait Well -4 Starting Batteries, 2 house Batts -20 Rod holders -Windlass -Top Speed- 60pmh -Burns- @ 4000rpms- 35-38 mph 40 Gallons per hour for all four engines BOAT LOCATION: Ft Myers, FL (33908) Make: Aronow Boats Model: (Rare! Only 279 Hours!) Length: 39 Dealer: Anglers Edge Marine ID: 201461 Ad provided by BoatingBay

1969 Thunderbird Formula 233 Cigarette Don Aronow Welcraft Mako Donzi

Richmond, Michigan

Make Thunderbird

Model Formula 233

Length 24.0

An original 1969 Formula 233 designed by Don Aronow at Thunderbird, and was the original "The Cigarette" boat(see first picture) that revolutionized offshore boat hulls. This was my boat from 2008-2013 and used regularly. I pulled the original Mercruiser 165 to rebuild in 2013 and never put it back together due to having a new boat given to me. The engine and outdrive are not included in the auction. However, the trailer is included. The boat has been sitting in my barn for 2 years and needs to find a new home. The canvas was new in 2011, but is filthy from sitting. The cockpit sole(floor) is pretty solid. Carpeting was removed, and I had replaced a soft spot by the engine compartment with new marine plywood and fiberglass(see newly painted white area). Much of the teak was recently refinished with Sikkens. The 2 pedestal chairs are also brand new and have not been completely installed(see pictures). The cabin doors were also refinished but are not screwed back on(set in place for pictures). Boat was used only in freshwater(Lake St. Clair). I apologize that I forgot to take pictures of the cuddy cabin, but there is little to be seen-it's dirty, but not scary. Gage cluster was totally rewired with modern marine electricals, complete with a new fuse block. Much work has been done to this boat, but much still needs to be done. Bring your own powerplant-boat could have been ordered with single inline 6, twin inline 6's, single small block, twin small block or single big block! This is an amazing off-shore hull(just google Don Aronow formula 233 "the Cigarette") that is becoming very hard to find(at least one that is not a total wreck). It is on the original trailer that tracks and pulls well with newer bearings and bearing buddies. Trailer tires have excellent tread and are not checked or cracking(stored inside). The trailer winch will be re-installed before the winner comes to pick up the boat(just replaced retrieval eye on boat). Please ask questions and bid to win! NOTE: Someone had it retitled as a 1973 at some point-lost title? It is free and clear, and I will transfer title to you at pickup. I could part this out, but I would like to see it go somewhere it will be put back on the water.

MAGNUM MISSILE TUNNEL BOAT BY DON ARONOW MAGNUM MARINE

Voorhees, New Jersey

MAGNUM MISSILE TUNNEL HULL ON TRAILER , NO POWER OR TITLE ( TITLE THROUGH MISSISSIPPI 25 DOLLARS ) JACKPLATE NOT INCLUDED , NOT SURE OF YEAR , MID 70'S MAYBE .NEEDS TRANSOM , WHATS LEFT OF THE SEATS ARE THERE . TRAILER OVERALL SOLID HOWEVER ITS WISE TO USE FLAT BED OR CAR TRAILER . JACKPLATE NOT INCLUDED 609-315 TWO SIX FOUR ZERO

28' Original Don Aronow Donzi Hull # 3 in series, Thunder Alley

Preston, Maryland

Length 28.0

Deep V design prototype cabin cruiser, sleeps 2-3. 50-60 mph boat. Shrink wrapped for the past three years, garage kept before that. Sold as is 17,500. 2012 survey quoted at $40,000. Remodeled in 2009. This engine is 2010. This is an original ocean racer from Miami.

1988 CIGARETTE

1988 Cigarette Racing This is an original 1988 cigarette decathlon open fish that just received an extremely detail oriented, no-expenses-spared, overhaul completed in 2016. For those unfamiliar with the Cigarette Decathlons they were a Don Aronow design built on a similar deep-V hull as the Cigarette Bullet, it is a very beamy, very fast and very strong hull capable of handling offshore rough weather comfortably. It cuts through the waves like butter and is always a very dry ride due to the tall gunnels. When I purchased the boat it was flawless but outdated so I stripped it down and built it into the work of art that it is today. It was built with the best of everything including triple 300xs mercury racing motors. Too much has been done to this boat to list it all but I'd be happy to talk to a serious buyer about it all. It has Latham racing steering, Livorsi gauges(carbon fiber with cig logo) & controls, full custom interior, custom paint, tons of carbon fiber accents, hydraulic rear hatch, and tons more. No corners were cut in this build, my blood, sweat and tears went into it. It is in turn-key, new condition. It comes with a great triple axle trailer ready for a trip anywhere. This is a US coast guard documented boat free of liens. Serious buyers call or text

1981 CIGARETTE Squadron XII

Cullman, Alabama

Make CIGARETTE

Model Squadron XII

1981 CIGARETTE Squadron XII REDUCED - Don Aronow original 39' Cigarette Squadron XII. Less than 10 39's were built. Twin 900HP Merc's with 5 hours each. Pre-oilers, Super Chillers. Have all receipts and dyno sheets. #4 Speedmasters, new props, Kicker stereo system, SeaAir in the cuddy. LED light throughout. Everything works on this boat. Every light, switch, gauge, everything. Reduced $10,000 for quick sale. Lowest priced, fully functional large Cigarette in the nation. Buy two new 900's get a free boat. $79,995.00 We finance. Music City Powersports. Call for more details.

1969 Nova 24 Sprint

Sister Bay, Wisconsin

Model 24 Sprint

Category Aluminum Fishing Boats

1969 Nova 24 Sprint This Nova Sprint 24 is hull #2460 the 60th hull out of the 146 Nova Sprint 24's built by Nova Marine. Loughborough Marine of Newport Rhode Island restored this Nova 24 from the hull bottom up.Over $100,000 was spent on the project. In the late 60's Allan Brown and offshore racing legend Don Aronow founded Nova Marine on "Thunder Row" in Miami. "Brownie" created and produced the Nova Sprint 24 and their "Super Nova"  won the Miami- Nassau Offshore Powerboat Race in 1969.

2001 Cary 70 Performance Yacht

Goodland, Florida

Model 70 Performance Yacht

2001 Cary 70 Performance Yacht Price Reduction $150,000.00! THIS CARY 70 EXPRESS PERFORMANCE YACHT HAS BEEN RESTORED, MAINTAINED AND SHOWS LIKE NEW CONDITION. 660 ORIGINAL HOURS Viewing the Cary 70 this yacht is truly sensational. The deck stretches forever, the polished stainless windshield is swept back, and the lines are muscular and bent on speed. A sport yacht combining the raw animal power of an offshore racer with the elegance of a mega yacht. It is, quite simply, a yacht like no other. It is not the length nor the luxurious accommodations or even the twin 1,450-horsepower high-performance diesels that make this yacht stand apart. Arneson high-performance surface drive, cruising at speeds up to 50 mph, along with massive polished stainless-steel DeAngelo Marine exhaust in the transom gives away the secret of the Cary 70 ............. a 3,000-horsepower yacht that can move 30 tons to 43 Kts quickly. HAWK is the Last of 6 70 ' Cary's builtCary marine has always had a loyal following of knowledgeable boaters who appreciate their remarkable looks and performance. Cary Marines history dates back to the 1960s, when Elton Cary joined with racing specialist Don Aronow to create the first Cigarette. When a reporter asked him what made Cary boats better, he replied: Time, custom building boats to fit any self-respecting millionaire. The company's philosophy was always to focus on quality, not quantity. It's the difference between a fine painting and a selfie. Cary Marine manufactured hulls 28' 70'. The 28' and 32' were sold to Blackfin Yachts and are still used in production today. Cary Marine continued to focus on 45', 50' and 70' models each for use within a specific market. Again quality, not quantity."This Cary is the finest example"

1996 Tempest XPE27 Diesel, Porsche Kineo Inspiration

St Petersburg, Florida

Make Tempest

Model XPE27 Diesel, Porsche Kineo Inspiration

Category Cuddy Cabin Boats

1996 Tempest XPE27 Diesel, Porsche Kineo Inspiration This is the highly coveted, one of a kind, Diesel Tempest XPE27 sharing inspiration with Kineo 27 Designed by Porsche. In the late 1980's the Porsche team started with a close version of the famed 'Aronow 27' hull design and created the 27 Kineo pushing the limits of marine styling and sleekness. Tempest Engineering in the mid-1990's sharing love and inspiration of the groundbreaking Porsche design created this XPE27. In 2008 Mastry Engine Center repowered the boat with a 2008 single fresh water cooled Yanmar Diesel with the revolutionary 'Geared Up' twin propulsion system allowing you the benefits of twins like the speed and maneuvering, with the savings of a single 480hp Yanmar Diesel.  Topside you will find great cockpit seating for a performance ride and a helm that will give the captain a feel of Porsche-like speed and control. The helm itself is outfitted with a Yanmar smart-gage system plus a GPS, VHF, and stereo. Below you will find a nicely finished cuddy cabin. This boat, single Yanmar, and Geared Up drive system tests the bounds of speed and efficiency doing  a cruise speed of 54 mph at 2600 rpm and getting 4.2 miles per gallon. Open her up and you will top 60 while still achieving 2.9 mph.The next owner of the boat will learn that owning a head-turning, high-performance, and uber-efficient boat like this proves there is no substitute.... OWNERS REMARKS: I am a multiple boat owner that appreciates classics and collectors items and could not resist this boat when I purchased it 5 years ago. She is a true original that has been renovated and maintained to the highest standards. The boat has been stored on her Loadmaster trailer inside a private warehouse and never wanted for any maintenance or service. From experienced boat owner to another: This boat will blow your mind and hair back while leaving your wallet unruffled.. LOA 27, Beam 86, Fuel gal Draft 20 Engine 2008 fresh-water cooled Yanmar 6LY3 480 HP Hours 157...See Pictures for Spec Sheet The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, or withdrawal without notice.

1995 Tempest XPE27 Porsche Kineo Inspiration

Model XPE27 Porsche Kineo Inspiration

1995 Tempest XPE27 Porsche Kineo Inspiration  More info coming soonThis is the highly coveted, one of a kind, Diesel Tempest XPE27 sharing inspiration with Kineo 27 Designed by Porsche. In the late 1980's the Porsche team started with a close version of the famed 'Aronow' 27 hull design and created the 27 Kineo pushing the limits of marine styling and sleekness. Tempest Engineering in the mid-1990's sharing love and inspiration of the groundbreaking Porsche design created this XPE27. In 2008 Mastry Engine Center repowered the boat with a single Yanmar Diesel with the revolutionary 'Geared Up' twin propulsion system allowing you the benefits of twins like the 60mph speed and maneuvering, with the savings of a single 480hp Yanmar Diesel. Topside you will find great cockpit seating for a performance ride and down below you will find a spacious cuddy-cabin.  OWNERS REMARKS: This collectors item has be renovated and maintained to the highest standards... LOA 27, Beam 8’6”, Fuel gal Draft 20” Engine Yanmar 6LY3 480 HP HOURS,The Company offers the details of this vessel in good faith but cannot guarantee or warrant the accuracy of this information nor warrant the condition of the vessel. A buyer should instruct his agents, or his surveyors, to investigate such details as the buyer desires validated. This vessel is offered subject to prior sale, price change, or withdrawal without notice.

1988 Cigarette Racing

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POWERBOAT PIONEER SHOT TO DEATH DESIGNER, RACER…

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POWERBOAT PIONEER SHOT TO DEATH DESIGNER, RACER DONALD ARONOW SLAIN IN CAR IN NORTHEAST MIAMI

Prominent powerboat designer and racer Donald Aronow was shot and killed Tuesday in his car outside a boat-building business in northeast Miami, officials said.

Aronow, three-time world offshore powerboat racing champion, designed the hulls of Cigarette speedboats, which are used by drug runners and law enforcement agents, officials said.

Aronow, 59, died at Mt. Sinai Hospital about 4:50 p.m., about an hour after the shooting, said Lori Fagenholz, a hospital spokeswoman.

Aronow was shot while he sat in his Mercedes outside Apache Marine Inc., a boat-building company in which he had an interest, said a woman

at the nearby Fort Apache Marina.

The woman said she was a nurse who was called to attend to Aronow after the shooting. Aronow was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital by helicopter, Fagenholz said.

Associates of Aronow reported that a man in a black Lincoln shot Aronow five or six times. Aronow rolled down his window when the Lincoln pulled alongside and was hit in the chest, head and wrist, friends said.

Aronow, a leading manufacturer of high performance boats since the 1960s, also was the offshore powerboat racing world champion in 1967 and 1969, and the U.S. champion in 1967, 1968 and 1969, said John Crouse, his public relations manager.

Aronow designed, built and raced the Formula, Donzi, Magnum and Cigarette powerboats, and founded the companies that built them. He sold all those companies and owned U.S.A. Racing Team when he died, Crouse said.

He recently sold a fleet of high-performance catamarans to the U.S. Customs Service for chasing drug dealers.

Aronow retired in 1969 from offshore racing, but was planning to drive his new 45-foot U.S.A. Racing Team design in the annual Miami-Nassau boat race in July, Crouse said.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Aronow retired at 31 as a millionaire building contractor in New Jersey. He moved to Miami in 1960 where he began to build his own boats and race them, Crouse said.

Aronow was married twice and had five children.

Crouse said Aronow’s friends included Vice President George Bush, to whom he sold boats, and King Hussein of Jordan.

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Aronow Introducing Unlimited Catamaran

By Joanne A. Fishman

• June 28, 1981

For 17 years, Don Aronow has been the biggest kid on the block. And why not? It's his block, after all, the swampy stretch of 188th Street in Florida's North Miami Beach. With his fortune made in real estate, Aronow returned to the first love of his youth -fast boats. And he started on 188th Street by creating a Formula boat company.

Since then, Aronow has formed a string of high-performance boat companies - Donzi, Magnum, Cigarette and Squadron XII - all on the same block. No matter that he stopped racing offshore power boats 11 years ago after capturing two world and three national titles. Aronow's influence in the sport dominates. But now, the 53-year-old designer and builder has merged his Squadron boats with his recently reacquired Cigarette Racing Team, and he's preparing to invade new territory - the unlimited hydroplane circuit.

Aronow, in conjunction with Gary Garbrecht, the former head of Mercury Marine's racing program, has created an unlimited hydroplane that is revolution in design as well as power. Tests are scheduled to begin on Lake Havasu, in Arizona, this week with the craft, called the Aronow Unlimited, expected to make its debut on the thunderbolt circuit by the end of July. Buck Thornton, a tunnel boat driver from Richmond, Va., has been named the driver.

The unlimited hydroplanes are the fastest boats afloat. Riding on the tips of two sponsons and half a propeller, they are capable of reaching speeds over 200 miles an hour. Traditionally they are powered by a single, massive World War II airplane engine capable of generating 3,000-horsepower.

The Aronow Unlimited is the first unlimited of the catamaran design. It is considerably lighter than the traditional unlimiteds and is powered by two engines, supercharged Keith Black Chryslers producing 1,170-horsepower each, and connected to MerCruiser sterndrives. In test runs last year with smaller cosworth engines, according to Aronow, the 30-foot-long craft reached 175 miles an hour on the straightaway but was sluggish on the turns. Now with the larger engines and the sterndrives, for greater low-end torque, the new craft is expected to roar around the ovals with a lap speed of 140 m.p.h. This would be fast enough to upset the unlimited establishment, because the fastest recorded lap is the 140.6 m.p.h. set by Bill Muncey in Atlas Van Lines last year.

To change from offshore powerboats to the unlimiteds, Aronow said, ''is like changing from Formula One to stockcar racing. And to master both is very difficult.'' Part of the impetus for the shift is that the deep V hull, which Aronow had developed to perfection in offshore competition, has reached its maximum potential.

''You can't grow anymore with the deep V because we're limited to the power we have,'' he explained. Instead, Aronow sees the offshore circuit evolving into two-boat teams, with a deep V craft used in rough water and a catamaran in calm water.

''I love the rough water,'' Aronow said. ''There is a thrill about going out in water as rough as possible and racing. To me that was offshore racing. Now they call the races off if it's rough, and they race in lakes. If they want to go calm-water racing, let's go to unlimiteds. And that's what I'm doing.''

For Aronow, who began racing Jersey speed skiffs as a teen-ager growing up on the New Jersey Shore, the challenge with the unlimiteds is to find new ways of adapting power to hull shape. As he points out, super-charged engines, sterndrives and catamaran designs have been around for quite a while, ''but no one has been able to put them together before and make it work.''

From 188th Street, production versions of the Cigarette race boats are shipped to kings and Presidents. Vice-Presidents, too. George Bush just had his re-powered. Owners include the rich and famous (such as Ringo Starr, Vitas Gerulaitis and H. Ross Perot) as well as drug smugglers. The sale of Cigarette T-shirts and jackets alone is bringing in $100,000 a year.

But for the biggest kid on the block, the fun isn't in the ledgers. It's on the race course. And that's where he's headed once more.

Sailboarding, the newest sport added to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, will be showcased in New York City waters at the Enduro MK II sailboarding rally next Saturday from noon to 3 P.M. at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. The rally, sponsored by the City Department of Parks and Recreation, will feature a race among veteran sailors, in-water instruction, demonstrations, and on-land sailboard simulators.