Miami Vice was once extremely popular and defined car and boat fashion in addition to clothing fashion.
Shoulder taps, fast boats and drug crimes. All of that was the legendary police series Miami Vice (1984–1989).
Five seasons of the American series were also broadcast in Finland on the MTV channel between 1986 and 1991.
The popular series stars super cool guys Don Johnson as James “Sonny” Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs.
One of the iconic flagships of the series was Crokett and Tubbs' Wellcraft Scarab 38 KV muscle boat.
Few people remember that the boat used in the series was seen in Finland at the Helsinki boat fair in the peak year of the series in 1989. The incident was reported in Kippari magazine 5/1989.
Miami Vice starred Don Johnson (left) and Philip Michael Thomas. The series was shown in Finland between 1986 and 1991.
Kippari magazine editor-in-chief at the time Vesa Alper got to drive a boat in Helsinki. He remembers the test drive in January In Kippari magazine.
“The boat was shown in Finland at the Helsinki boat fair and we agreed that as soon as possible, we would go for a ride and make a story about it,” Leppä tells HS.
The boat was a long, narrow and fast sports boat with two large Mercruiser 420 TRS V8 inboard engines at the back.
According to Leppa, the boat was excellent to drive.
“It was early summer and we were driving near Helsinki. The boat took nice leaps in the waves and the descent was smooth. We measured 58.4 knots as the top speed. On the other boat, the cameraman took pictures of us”, Leppä recalls.
The speed of 58.4 knots is about 108 kilometers per hour.
Miami Vice defined not only the clothing fashion of the late 1980s, but also car and boat fashion.
To the boat owned at the time by an American Daniel Miller, which had received the Swedish mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson as a sponsor. That's why Ericsson Hot Line tapes were on the side of the boat.
According to Lepä, the boat model became very famous from the Miami Vice series.
“Boats of that type were still quite rare in Finland. The whole muscle boat phenomenon became familiar to Finns with the series,” says Leppä.
Retired oleva Leppä still works as an assistant for Kippari magazine and mainly does boat testing. He has been a boat enthusiast “since he was a little boy.” For more than half of his career, he worked in boat magazines.
In January in Kippar, he got to test the new Wellcraft 355 Commuter boat. With that, I also remembered trying the Miami Vice boat back in the day.
Leppä says that it's not just every boy's toys. Both boats are very valuable.
“The price of the twin-engine Wellcraft 355 Commuter boat is around half a million euros. Two boats have been sold in Finland.”
Wellcraft Scarab muscle boat on the set of the Miami Vice series.
The fate of the boat used in the Miami Vice series is unknown in Leppä. In the last decade, it was sold in the United States for 20 million dollars.
Similar Wellcraft Scarab boats are no longer manufactured, but Scarab is now its own brand.
Reasons Decades later, there are many reasons for Miami Vice's popularity. The series was produced for the NBC television company by a director who later became a legend Michael Mann and the pioneer of synth music was responsible for the convincing music Jan Hammer.
In addition to the leading stars, the series featured a large number of famous or later famous actors, such as Viggo Mortensen, Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson and Ben Stiller as well as musicians such as Leonard Cohen, Gene Simmons, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis.
The cult-popular Miami Vice series can still be watched on streaming services.
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