The boat you see splashing across these pages is not boat-maker Baja Marine's everyday 35 Outlaw. It's a Poker Run edition, built for the low-stakes but high-adrenaline rush of poker runs. What's a poker run? It's a mad dash across rivers, lakes, even oceans, that involves grabbing playing cards along the way. The guy who accumulates the best poker hand wins. It's not a race, and participants usually have enough time to ogle each other and chill out. But you wouldn't know it, because if you are going to bother to take your $292,102-boat to a lake and spend hundreds to fill it full of gas, then you might as well get wind-burned at 92 mph to make it all worthwhile and froth the water's surface at the same time. To do that, you need a big, bad boat. Enter the Baja boat and a big, bad International CXT to pull it to the launch ramp.
The folks at Kustom Kolors, in Marion, Ohio, applied the paints on this truck-and-boat combo. Baja presented the graphic design to the shop and Kustom followed through nicely. The truck and boat share the same graphic theme and colors, albeit rendered differently. The team laid Sherwin-Williams paints, starting with a Midnight Blue base color spiked with a Sapphire flake. Red vies for dominance, humbling a flash of silver. Realistic flames flash across in yellow and orange. And a large, jolly - in so much as evil is jolly - skull leers from behind a hand of cards from the front deck of the boat (an impressive view that can only be appreciated from high above). Poker discards scatter across the sides of the CXT. Painting the truck took about three weeks to complete, and five weeks for the boat. While Kustom wasn't accustomed to doing realistic flames, now they can't stop. Demand for that kind of graphic has increased since the Baja project rolled out of the paint booth. You can't argue with results.
Other than the paint job, the CXT is what it was when it came from the factory: an International DT466 I-6 diesel that cranks 300 hp and 800 lb-ft of torque, an Allison five-speed transmission, four-wheel drive, audio and navigation, and the usual array of goodies (bright-finished heated mirrors, exterior sunshade, keyless entry, foglights, air horn, tilt steer, vertical bright-finish exhaust pipe, rearview camera). The truck actually belongs to International and is used by the company as a promotional vehicle, often paired with the boat.
The 35-foot boat weighs 1,200 pounds less than the standard 35 Outlaw thanks to heaping helpings of Kevlar and carbon fiber used in its construction, and the elimination of amenities such as the galley and enclosed head that comes with the regular 35 Outlaw. Combine that with twin 502ci, 575hp MerCruisers and four-blade props and you get card-shredding, sea-chopping maritime madness. Out of the box, this boat comes with a custom paint job (the one in this story is unique), a fiberglass engine lid with custom side pads, a special-edition dash with gauge trim rings, a billet tilt helm and shifter, anodized grab bars, cupholders, battery boxes, and tab indicators. A black rubrail with stainless insert, painted vents and horn, smoked deck hatch, cabin door, and low-profile windscreen round out the boat's offshore mystique. An upgraded audio system unique to the Poker Run edition includes a Clarion CMD4 head unit that feeds a CMP3.1 Clarion amplifier, which in turn powers four Polk Momo 6x9-inch speakers and a 10-inch Polk Momo subwoofer.
Like what you see? You better hang onto this issue, because the paint job on this boat and truck are unique to the vehicles that you see on these pages. Granted, if you have the money to spend, Kustom Kolors would likely be glad to reproduce the paint scheme for you. Otherwise, take a long, hard look at these pictures, because the next time you go to the water to take a gander at this boat/truck combo, all you might see is a split-second glimpse of fire, water, and bones.