Lexus has built a boat with 885bhp

Building a fast yacht is almost a rite of passage for performance car makers these days. AMG has been doing it for years with its Arrows cigarette racing boats, Aston Martin got in on the act with its Netherlands-built AM37, and Bugatti recently unsheathed its fabulously immodest $2m-and-up three-boat Niniette range.

But as beautiful and hair-rufflingly fast as all the above are, they're not as truly authentic as the new Lexus Sport Yacht Concept, which broke cover in Miami a few days ago, As much as the others want to bestow their own design and engineering DNA onto their craft, and borrow back in their cars, none of them has its own Marine Business Department like Toyota.

That was set up in 1997 to develop premium yachts employing the tech and quality methods perfected in creating Lexus cars. So it was only natural that TMC president Akio Toyoda thought it high time to see what they could do. What you see here is what they came up with.

Powered by two 5.0-litre V8 engines borrowed from the LC500, the 42ft Lexus yacht makes a total of 885bhp and has a top speed of 49mph – that’s 43 knots for you nautical types. Not that fast on the road, but warp factor five when you throw in a few waves and a strong breeze.

As you might expect from a brand as technology-saturated as Lexus, the CFRP-hulled eight-man yacht is controlled by a vast colour touchscreen which monitors and controls everything from the navigation and radar to the lighting and the temperature of the fridge. Well, maybe not the last one. But everything anyway.

Down below, the leather and wood wrapped cabin is, also per Lexus road car form, covered in near-invisible panel gaps and the head – the nautical name for the WC – is also described as ‘beautifully finished’. Should think so, too. Completing the feeling of being in a floating LS400, there’s a vast Mark Levinson sound system. So everything is present and correct.

Best bit about the whole boat? The submarine lights that make the bow wave look like the boat has a couple of afterburners. But as fun as those are, it might be a while before you can buy some. The Lexus Sport Yacht concept is not meant for sale, just to demo the idea. But, as with concept cars, there’s no waves without a wind...