Cigarette Racing Showcases Qatar VIP Top Gun

ByMatt Trulio

Visitors to this morning’s opening day of the 2014 Miami International Boat Show got their first look at Cigarette Racing Team‘s new “Gold VIP Edition” 38’ Top Gun V-bottom. The product of what Cigarette company owner and chief executive officer Skip Braver called a “partnership” between the Opa-locka, Fla., high-performance boat and center console builder and the Qatar Marine Sports Federation (QMSF), the 38-footer will be used by Qatar’s offshore racing teams to host special guests during the 2014 domestic offshore racing season.

Cigarette Racing's new "Gold VIP Edition" 38’ Top Gun shares the same deep red base color with gold accents as the Qatar Team’s Al Adaa’am 96 Mystic Powerboats offshore racing catamaran with turbine engines.

Led by Sheikh Hassan bin Jabor Al-Thani, the QMSF offshore racing team is coming off a successful three-boat campaign that earned the outfit first-, second- and third-place overall finishes at the 2013 Super Boat International Key West Offshore World Championships in November.

Twin Mercury Racing 540 engines power the new 38-foot Cigarette.
The Qatar Team's new Cigarette "Gold VIP Edition” 38’ Top Gun will be used to host special guests during the 2014 domestic offshore racing season.Click images to enlarge and for captions

“I’m really honored that Sheikh Hassan chose us and that we have the privilege of building this boat,” Braver said. “I think there were two things that impressed Sheikh Hassan about our company, and why he chose us for this project. One was the history of Cigarette in the offshore racing and high-performance pleasure boating worlds. Being an offshore racer, Sheikh Hassan appreciates that history. The other is our current technology—a key element of what we call ‘the Cigarette difference’—and our technological relationships.”

Twin Mercury Racing 540 engines, the latest addition to the high-performance marine engine builder’s line, power the one-of-a-kind sportboat. The new powerplants also were introduced to the public for the first time at the show this morning (read the story).

The Gold VIP Edition 38′ Top Gun carries many of the same graphic elements, most notably a deep red base color with gold accents, as the Qatar Team’s Al Adaa’am 96 offshore racing powerboat, a 50-foot Mystic Powerboats catamaran with turbine power. In keeping with the gold accent theme, gold anodized custom billet hardware was incorporated extensively throughout the boat. Gold thread was even used in the boat’s custom-stitched upholstery.

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