aronow powerboats

• Subscribe Now
• Digital Editions

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.”

Azimut 62 Fly First Look: Seting New Standards for Outdoor Entertaining

Arksen 65 first look: brand new british explorer yacht, new boats at southampton boat show: greenline 45 fly, latest videos, pearl 82 tour: must-see £6m ‘mini superyacht’, princess s65 sea trial and tour: £2m sportsfly ticks all the boxes, watch: beneteau swift trawler 54 sea trial – £1.4m cruiser is the ultimate home, watch: parker sorrento sea trial: 50-knot cruiser with a killer aft cabin.

Poison Tree

30 for 30 Shorts: ‘Collision Course’

Our latest film, from acclaimed director Billy Corben, tells the story of fast times, faster boats, and the man in the middle of it all

W elcome back to our 30 for 30 documentary short series.

Don Aronow was a family man who moved to Miami in the ’60s after making a fortune in New Jersey construction, but soon his focus turned to building and racing cigarette boats. He became world famous, selling boats and fostering close relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. But during that time in Miami, the people who needed Aronow’s products the most (and some of the only ones who could afford the hefty price tag) were drug smugglers. Aronow’s tale would end in a hail of bullets, leaving questions that still haven’t been answered.

Previously:

• Arthur & Johnnie , directed by Tate Donovan » • Wilt Chamberlain: Borscht Belt Bellhop , directed by Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg » • Tommy and Frank , directed by Richie Keen » • Cutthroat , directed by Steven Cantor » • Silver Reunion , directed by Rory Karpf » • Holy Grail: The T206 Honus Wagner , directed by Nick and Colin Barnicle » • Disdain the Mundane , directed by Nelson George » • Ali: The Mission , directed by Amani Martin » • The Arnold Palmer , directed by Bryan Gordon » • Jake , directed by Jonathan Hock » • Arnold’s Blueprint , directed by Michael and Jeff Zimbalist » • Here Now , directed by Eric Drath »

Filed Under: 30 For 30 , Series

More 30 For 30

More features, we went there: clippers-mavs and deandre jordan night in los angeles october 30, 2015, nba overnight: where was the spark october 30, 2015, ‘jalen and jacoby’: discussing demarcus cousins, the thunder, and more october 30, 2015, happy ‘halloween’: the best horror-movie monsters october 29, 2015, the tao of dabo: how to appreciate clemson’s coach october 29, 2015.

See all from

An Ode to the Marathoner October 30, 2015

30 for 30 shorts: every day october 28, 2015, the value of the struggle in kansas city october 9, 2015, 30 for 30 shorts: #bringbacksungwoo october 7, 2015, 30 for 30 shorts: the pittsburgh drug trials september 23, 2015.

See all 30 For 30

Blades of Glory October 28, 2015

Russell, the creator october 28, 2015, the 15 biggest plays in baseball history october 27, 2015, the laughs, pathos, and overwhelming talent of jan hooks october 20, 2015.

See all Features

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

DONALD ARONOW, BOAT DESIGNER AND CHAMION RACER, SHOT TO DEATH

• Feb. 4, 1987

Donald Aronow, a boat builder and champion racer who designed the sleek, speedy Cigarette boat, was shot to death today, the authorities said.

Mr. Aronow, 59 years old, was pronounced dead of multiple gunshot wounds at Mount Sinai Medical Center about 4:45 P.M., the hospital reported.

At the time of the shooting, Mr. Aronow was in an automobile leaving the Apache Marine, a boat-building shop north of Miami. A spokesman for the Metro-Dade Police Department, Dick Turner, said he had no other information about the shooting.

Mr. Aronow formed a string of high-performance boat companies: Donzi, Magnum, Cigarette and Squadron XII.

Popular in competitive racing, the powerful, sleek-hulled Cigarette boats also became favored by drug smugglers and were featured on the ''Miami Vice'' television show.

Federal Customs agents started using the craft to keep up with the smugglers, and Mr. Aronow helped design ''Blue Thunder,'' the Customs Service's drug interdiction boat. Early Days on Jersey Shore

Mr. Aronow, who would have been 60 on March 1, was a New York native and grew up racing speed skiffs on the New Jersey shore. After serving in the Merchant Marines in World War II, he married and became a builder in New Jersey.

By the age of 28, he was a millionaire, and in 1964 he moved to Florida where he began his boating career, racing for the first time in the 1964 Miami-Nassau race.

He had little success winning races until he began designing his own boats in the mid-1960's. He went on to win the world championship of powerboat racing in 1967 and 1969.

In 1969, Mr. Aronow also became the first man to win eight offshore races in one season, including the Sam Griffith Trophy for the world championship, and the United States National Champions competition in open class.

In his early victories, Mr. Aronow used the ''V Cigarette'' prototype boat, which later became a famous offshore racing hull.

Mr. Aronow was a friend of Vice President Bush, who owns a 28-foot Cigarette boat designed by Mr. Aronow.

Mr. Aronow's survivors include three children from his first marriage, Claudia, David and Michael, as well as his wife Lillian, and their two young children.

Friday, Late City Final Edition

How we handle corrections

               

47' Aronow 47

47' ARONOW 47

--> -->

BOAT DESIGNER ARONOW LIVED, DIED ON EDGE OF DANGER

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on X (Opens in new window)

Daily e-Edition

Evening e-Edition

• Entertainment
• Restaurants, Food & Drink

“When I heard the shots, I knew it was an automatic pistol, but I didn’t think much of it because people target shoot across the canal,” said Bob Gowens, president of the Cigarette Racing Team that Aronow built from scratch into a world-known symbol of speed and power before selling it in 1984.

“I didn’t know what was happening until I heard the sirens,” Gowens said. The sirens belonged to police and paramedics who sped onto warehouse row Tuesday past parking lots filled with the powerful speedboats created by Aronow. But the paramedics who found Aronow’s bullet-riddled body in his white Mercedes sports car could do little to save him.

Aronow, 59, who once joked that he sold his fastest boats to the U.S. Customs Service “so they could catch smugglers using boats my other companies have made,” was credited with almost singlehandedly creating the high- performance speedboat industry.

Aronow apparently had left a meeting Tuesday afternoon at the Apache Marine warehouse a block down from his USA Team racing boat warehouse when a dark blue Lincoln Town Car pulled up to his car.

Witnesses said Aronow rolled down his window and may have exchanged some words with a man in the Lincoln. The man then fired several pistol rounds into Aronow’s head in what Metro-Dade detectives described as a “gangland-style hit.”

Aronow was taken by helicopter to a hospital but died 45 minutes after the shooting.

Police released a composite drawing of a suspect Wednesday, but declined to talk about the investigation. Homicide investigators walked down warehouse row Wednesday seeking information from the scores of workers who either heard or saw the shooting about 4 p.m.

Condolences poured into Aronow’s Miami Beach home Wednesday from the likes of Vice President George Bush, a speedboat fan. Bush has ridden aboard Blue Thunder, a split V-hull Aronow recently designed for the Customs Service, which bought 13 of them.

Bush bought one of Aronow’s speedboats for his home in Kennebunkport, Maine. It’s a 28-foot version of the famous Cigarette boat. A Bush spokesman said Wednesday the vice president and Aronow spoke occasionally about their interest in boating.

Aronow also sold boats to Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Jordan’s King Hussein. Both were among those sending condolences to Aronow’s wife and children.

Aronow did more than design and build the boats. He raced them well enough to win two world powerboat racing championships. He was the dominant figure in the offshore high-performance powerboat racing industry.

“He built this street and he died on this street,” said George Piparo, a burly, T-shirted boat painter who worked with Aronow for 20 years.

“Speed was born on this block. You got Elvis Presley in rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s Don Aronow in boat racing.”

Magnum, Donzi, Fort Apache, USA Team and Cigarette — the deep V-shaped hull that revolutionized speedboat racing, are the names on the warehouses along the street. It was Aronow who played a major role in either creating, designing or marketing each of them.

They are boats with price tags ranging from $140,000 for 35-foot versions to more than $300,000 for 41-foot versions. Gowens called them expensive toys sold to “the same kind of customer that has been successful in his lifetime and wants to have the ultimate powerboat.”

A man who seemed to become bored with his speedboats when they became successful, Aronow repeatedly moved down the street and opened a new warehouse and proceeded to out-compete his former creation.

He had become more involved in horse racing in recent years, retiring from powerboat racing in 1979 after his son was paralyzed in an automobile accident.

Aronow spent Saturday at Hialeah Park watching one of his thoroughbreds finish out of the money in the Bougainvillea Handicap.

But he had recently bought a warehouse between his current company, USA Team, and the headquarters for his most famous creation, Cigarette boats. The word on the street was that Aronow was thinking of coming home to do what he did best: design, build and race the fastest powerboats in the world.

Just two hours before he was killed Tuesday, Aronow told a Miami News reporter doing a story on boat builders that he knew drug smugglers were attracted by the combination of speed, balance and power he built into his boats.

When asked by Miami News reporter Jim Steinberg if drug smugglers tried to buy his boats, Aronow said: “I suppose they have. It’s hard to tell . . . you can have your suspicions . . . My business is with law enforcement.”

Close friends of Aronow stressed his sensitivity to the drug smuggling image of his Cigarette boats in particular.

“John would never sell to anybody he knew to be involved in drugs,” said John Crouse, a longtime friend and associate.

Officials of the U.S. attorney’s office, the Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Coast Guard agreed that Aronow was not under investigation, leaving his close associates stunned in a search for a reason for the murder.

“It’s like we all have enemies in our lives, but I never knew anybody who would want to kill him,” said Patty Lezaca, office manager for Aronow for 15 years. “I’ve been with him so long, I’d know if there were any problems.”

Gowens, the Cigarette boats president, clearly resented the drug angle.

“There are other boats that will hang together for one or two drug runs and cost a lot less,” Gowens said.

The single agreement on the street is that Aronow, who lived his high- speed life on the edge of danger in business and in racing on the water, might have run out of the luck that carried him to the status of a millionaire and boat racing legend.

“He must have stepped on the wrong toes,” one man said.

• Contact Us at the Orlando Sentinel
• Send a News Tip to the Orlando Sentinel

More in News

World News | Israeli soldiers pushed three apparently lifeless bodies from roofs during a West Bank raid

Crime and Public Safety | OPD investigating two deaths near Lake Nona as murder-suicide

Crime and Public Safety | Ocoee High student arrested after bringing gun parts on campus

Mystery Stalks Street Where Speedboat King Met Violent Death

• Copy Link URL Copied!

It is known as Boatbuild ers’ Row, Gasoline Alley or Performance Street, but, since early this month, 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 of a northern Miami suburb, near the ocean that made his pulse race, that Aronow built the boats that made him a legend of the sporting world. And it was here, on the afternoon of Feb. 3, that he was shot to death by a man who hailed his white Mercedes in the middle of the street.

Police say that the motive remains unclear. The possibilities are as varied as was Aronow’s life style, which his friends say was a constant quest for excitement in the forms of money, women, success and--above all--speed.

A child of the Depression, Aronow, who was 59, founded several of the world’s hottest speedboat manufacturing companies. His established a company’s reputation by winning races (the world offshore powerboat championship twice, the U.S. championship three times), then would sell the company at an enormous profit and start a new one next door.

Boatbuilders’ Row

Gasoline Alley--that is, NE 188th Street--bears the names of the companies that 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 of the boat builders along the street, Theodoli heard the shots that killed Aronow. He rushed to his window and saw the gunman making his getaway in a dark blue Lincoln Continental. Other witnesses described the killer as a middle-aged white man with wavy, medium-length brown hair, a dark complexion and stubbled chin.

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

“That’s the king,” came the response. “He built this entire street.”

‘Triumph and Tragedy’

The incident was recalled at a memorial service for Aronow in Miami by a racing colleague, Florida eye surgeon Dr. Robert Magoon. Describing his 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.”

Among Aronow’s customers were Vice President George Bush, the former Haitian dictator Jean Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, King Hussein of Jordan and King Juan Carlos of Spain. Some of his boats ended up in the hands of leading drug syndicates.

After drug smugglers started making use of his 90-m.p.h. Cigarette boats in the mid-’70s, the Customs Service equipped itself with a 39-foot catamaran, also designed by Aronow and dubbed “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 a boat to smugglers.

Immigrant Worker’s Son

Aronow’s career was a rags-to-riches story lived by a character who was larger than life. His father, a taxicab owner whose family came 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.

He was a gym teacher in the Bronx and served in the Merchant Marine before he got started in the construction business. By 1956, at the age of 28, thousands of new tract houses in northern New Jersey had made him a millionaire. He retired to Florida in 1960, and bought himself a speedboat.

He was unhappy with the boat’s construction, and decided to design one for himself. His first boat, made of wood, broke apart. His second, the Formula, was made of Fiberglas--and it was a winner. Suddenly, Aronow found himself in the powerboat business.

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

Design Skills Praised

“Don was to offshore speedboats what Ben Franklin was to electricity,” said one 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 sense of competition. They also mentioned his macho personality, rough manners and occasionally explosive temper.

“Every day was an adventure for Don,” said Bill Wishnick, 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 inventor of the popular marine outdrive, a device that combines the advantages of inboard and outboard engines. “His language could be crude occasionally, but it fitted his personality.”

Theodoli, the present owner of Magnum, added: “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.”

‘A Woman’s Man’

And then there were the women. Magoon described the lean, ruggedly handsome Aronow 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 the marriage as a part of his success story, and boasted, “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 performance--were another extension of his personality. When a Miami Herald reporter asked him 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 racing in 1970. After surviving 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 he nearly died in an automobile crash. Father and son decided to branch out--into racing and breeding horses.

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 about 40 2-year-olds in various stages of training.

In recent months, Aronow had spoken wistfully of returning to powerboat racing. According to his longtime friend and public-relations agent, John Crouse, he was planning to take part in the 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 had signed with the new owners of the Cigarette was about to expire.

Motive a Mystery

The circumstances of Aronow’s death mystified his friends and associates. They say that although he had made enemies with his business tactics, they 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 the 235 murders last year in Dade County (it has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation), at least 25% were drug-related. Customs officials described the boat builder as “cooperative” whenever he was asked for information about a client.

The problem with this theory is that Aronow’s killing did not resemble a professional hit. The gunman drove his own car. He had attracted the attention of passers-by by hanging around in Gasoline Alley for some time before he acted. 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 more than 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.”

More to Read

Kentucky sheriff charged in killing of judge at courthouse

Trial of reputed Mexican cartel leader’s son offers cautionary tale for ‘narco juniors’

Hungary refuses to pay fines for breaking EU asylum rules. Brussels is taking the money anyway

Sept. 18, 2024

Sign up for Essential California

The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

World & Nation

Burns and bison and bears, oh my! Yellowstone warns about hazards after woman falls into thermal pool

Column: Taylor Swift and the mystery of the undecided voter

North Carolina GOP governor candidate vows to stay in race despite media report

Sept. 19, 2024

Justice Department opens civil rights probe into sheriff’s office after torture of 2 Black men

Most read in world & nation.

How could pagers in Lebanon have been rigged to explode?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being investigated for allegedly collecting dead whale

French man admits in court to drugging his wife so he and dozens of men could rape her

Sept. 17, 2024

Floods threaten new areas in Central Europe and Italy

• Submit a Listing
• Legendary Photos
• Press Reviews

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.

Click Here to Read More

This article was originally posted on PowerboatNation.com .

Related Posts

EMAIL TO PAY IN CRYPTO – GET 10% OFF ORDERS ABOVE $100.000

Item added to your cart

SUBSCRIBE TO VÉHICULE NEWS

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.

WARPATH MERCH SHIRT

People love me cashmere beanie, i'm better than everyone else cashmere sweater, "not a sheep" cashmere scarf.

• Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
• Opens in a new window.

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

Zerojet oc 350, related articles, looking back on 40 years of bridge to..., the history of kiwi trailer boats by the..., a-z guide on trailers, marine batteries, getting further on your fuel, dmw trailers celebrate 50 years, power cats – the past, present & future, horizon yachts open house 2024.

D&B Publishing is proud to have delivered the Pacific regions best power boat read for over 25 years. Our PowerBoat team brings you the news, views and reviews from around the world. A team second to none when it comes to power boating.

• Boat Reviews
• Boat Safety
• Destinations
• Buyer Guide
• General Interest
• Company Profile
• [email protected]
• +64 9 428 2328

Log in or Sign up

You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser .

Jeff : Aronow Alpha 45

Advanced marine technology brings the Aronow Alpha 45 to the forefront of high-performance boating. This blend of race-proven power, supreme performance and exquisite luxury rides unmatched on the water. With its carbon fiber reinforced eck and stringer system, and hydrodynamic deep-V hull driven by three responsive powerplants capable of 2175 hp, the Aronow Alpha 45 can reach astounding speeds of 90+ mph. But , after all, you would expect that from a boat that bears the legendary name of Aronow. Full racing instrumentation, Mayfair external hydraulic steering, custom drop-bottom race-bolster seats, and integral fiberglass swim platform only hint at the standard equipment list. And because every Aronow Alpha 45 is custom built, the options are limited only by your imagination and desires. Each cabin suite with standing headroom is customized to reflect individual tastes and ideas of comfort. Your interior design may include fabric selections from exotic leathers to a suede covered lounge, hand lacquered cabinetry, fiber-optic carpeting, AM/FM stereo entertainment console, wet bar, stand up shower, climate control system and whatever else your sense of refinement dictates. The Aronow Alpha 45. Experience an adventure in power. Centerline Length: 47-5 Height, keel to windshield: 6-6 Beam: 8-0 Fuel: 310 gals Net weight: 16,000 lbs Freeboard: 3-6 Draft (drives down): 3-3 Posted by: Jeff - website: http://www.boatdesign.net/

• Information

Where are the babes?

Babes? They don't allow them near the mechanicals, do they?

My eyes water just looking at that......

toys for boys

What...only 90mph? If you were going to go to all that trouble...surely you'd built it to do 100+??? Now - if you ran it downhill - with a tailwind... ;o) Cheers!

Thats not fast, look at bill Barry-Cotter's boat Maritimo with only twin diesels but goes 155mph (250kmh for all us international people) Thats not a knife (boat) Marittimo goes better. (this is a knife)

• Category: Performance V-hull Boats Uploaded By: Jeff Date: Jul 6, 2002 View Count: 36,627 Comment Count: 6
• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Class of: 1975

Sport: Boat Racing

Having made his money in the construction business in the late 1950s, Aronow moved to Miami in 1961 where he began racing boats for a hobby. By the end of 1962 he had formed the Formula Marine boat company . In 1966, he founded Magnum Marine with Elton Cary and in 1970, after campaigning his boat “The Cigarette” around the world and winning the World Championship, he started Cigarette Racing Team using his own designs. He formed the USA Racing Team and built the Blue Thunders, 39-foot catamarans used by the United States Customs Service to patrol U.S. waters and run down illegal offshore activities, especially drug smuggling.

The great speed of Cigarette boats also made them a popular choice among cocaine runners. In 1987, Don was murdered in his car at the end of 188th Street in Miami where his boat companies operated. Two men — Ben Kramer, a suspected drug runner who bought Aronow’s USA Racing Team and was forced to sell it back to Aronow after the Customs Service refused to do business with him, and Bobby Young — eventually pleaded no contest to manslaughter related to Aronow’s murder.

Aronow’s boats won over 350 offshore races and he was a 2-time world champion and 3-time U.S. champion. He has been elected to every powerboating Hall of Fame in existence and he and Gar Wood were the only two Americans to have ever received the UIM Gold Medal of Honor.