a long reply

The first fiberglass Chris-Craft, the 1958 Silver Arrow, was powered by a Dearborn Interceptor V8.

The name Interceptor came from the Ford police engines, which Ford called Interceptors even in the flathead days. If I remember right, the police engines were painted silver…maybe not - fuzzy memory these days.

I spent my summers growing up on the Canadian side of the Detroit River across from Belle Isle. On the island were 'measured mile poles' so you could time your boat - a two-way average because of the current. We used to see a Higgins running the mile on weekdays, very fast and V8 powered. People said that it was a Dearborn Engine test boat. Chrysler Marine would run boats through the mile too. Chrysler had a boathouse on the river where they kept test boats, one I remember was a V8 powered Century Resorter and really fast. Must have been a tough job. I posted earlier that that I saw Cal Connell, the guy that started Crusader Marine, in his boat Cadillac Crusader, at our neighbor's once in a while too. So we had Dearborn Interceptor, Chrysler Marine, and Crusader boats running around, and the Chris-Craft plant was just across Lake St. Clair up in Algonac. What a way for a guy to grow up.

Regarding the Ford 390: I was working in Oldsmobile Experimental in the early 60's, and we were heavily involved in NASCAR (Lee Petty won the Daytona 500 in 1959 in an Oldsmobile with one of our engines). For an engine to be NASCAR legal then, the manufacturers had to have engines for sale to the public - at least in small quantities, so we had Ford, Pontiac, and Chrysler engines for "evaluation". The race cars used to paint the horsepower on the hood for the spectators to see - Pontiac '368 HP', Ford '390 HP', etc. - B.S. I remember we had a Ford '390' - this was before the production 390 came out - the first dyno run with the this '390' produced well over 425 horsepower, before we even started tweaking - this after some of the engineers doubted the 390 hp claim. We got the same results with Pontiac and Chrysler engines too. A Chrysler with the two four-barrel ram set-up held the record on our dyno I think until maybe one of our twin-turbo charged Olds 455 cu. in. in 1963. The turbo jobs were not for racing, just experimental. A fun place to work then.