Mike Fiore built boats for more than 30 years, beginning as a youth working for his father’s company, and ultimately founding Outerlimits Powerboats. His life was cut short after a tragic crash at the 2014 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, but his legacy endures.
Looking back at Mike’s life, what emerges time and again is his love for his family, and his passion for boating.
Paul Fiore, Mike’s father, founded Hustler Powerboats in 1979. Mike was 10 years old at the time, and would soon find himself working on powerboats, learning the trade in a company that propelled performance boating to new speeds and new levels of stability. In 1984, Hustler won the Product Excellence award from Powerboat Magazine, after stunning the performance boating world with a 85 mph run at the Powerboat Magazine performance trials. At that time, in the early-80s, performance boats hitting speeds in the 60s were having major problems with stability.
Mike ran his first race in 1988, in a 40-ft. Hustler, in the Chesapeake Bay.
Fast-forward 20 years. An Outerlimits v-hull wins the Super V Extreme class at the 2008 Super Boat International World Championship in Key West.
Then in 2013, Joe Srgo and Mike Fiore set the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout v-hull record, hitting 152 mph.
And on April 29, 2014, on the Pamlico River in Washington, N.C., Srgo and Brian Forehand drove an Outerlimits SV43 181 miles per hour, setting a new world kilo record for v-hulls.
The trajectory Mike set for Outerlimits was always upward.
He founded Outerlimits in 1993 at age 23, and built his first Outerlimits v-hull, a 37-footer, in 1993 in Holbrook, Long Island, NY.
Eventually Paul Fiore retired from Hustler. Then, after a few years, his restless love for powerboating propelled him back into it. But now the roles were reversed: Paul, the father, was working for Mike, the son. The elder Fiore entered the sales and customer service department and helped push Outerlimits to even greater success.
Mike shared that same restless love. In the midst of a recession that was brutal on performance boat companies, Mike found himself working on the boats himself, after having to make staff cuts. Those cuts were, he said, “My lowest moment,” during those tough days. But when asked in an interview with Speed On The Water magazine if he ever considered closing the shop during the the recession, he gave a vehement, “Never.”
Mike had brought Outerlimits’ best offerings to the Lake of the Ozarks for years: his first Shootout was in 1989, and in an interview for the 25th Annual Shootout Guide in 2013, he spoke glowingly of the race: “It is a well-organized event, different than poker runs. It is a clear-cut winner. I like that it is based on speed, which is always fun. As a stand-alone event it is more fun than offshore boat racing because it is less political. You run and whoever wins, that’s the way it is.”
He continued, “Nothing compares to the LOZ Shootout. There are other events across the country that try to do the same type of speed run but there is only one Lake of the Ozarks.”
In the performance boating community, Mike was considered a prodigy—a pioneer. Having begun with the most seemingly menial tasks as a youth at Hustler, he knew how to build revolutionary powerboats every step of the way, and he built more than 400 of them as the captain of Outerlimits.
He told Speed On The Water, “Quality was always really important to me—building a product that was bulletproof—because, you know, when I run a boat I run it very hard and very aggressively. Always have, always will.”
He added, “Money was never my first priority in the business… It was always about the boat and it still is.”
Those were his business priorities. But in 2013, Mike made clear his life priorities in an interview for the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout Guide: “First and foremost I spend time with my family; secondly, I build boats.”
In the tribute written by Matt Trulio and Dustin Whipple for Mike’s Celebration of Life, his friend and brother-in-law put it this way:
“The brightest light in Fiore’s eyes didn’t show up when he was talking about his boats or his favorite pizza from Long Island, but when he talked about his ‘wifey’ Shonda and being a dad to their babies, Jet and Moxie and his daughter Sophia.”
Mike’s wife Shonda Whipple-Fiore is the daughter of Art Whipple, who founded Whipple Industries, known for its superchargers. His daughter Sophia, from a previous marriage, is 11 years old. Jet is 2, and Moxie is 1.
In Mike’s tribute were listed some of his favorite things: watching Sophia ride horses, driving remote control boats in the pool with Jet, training Moxie to be a princess, and making his “wifey” smile and laugh every second of the day.
Mike’s friends remember his love for McDonald’s french fries and his witty banter—for them, those memories endure long after the sounds of race boats fall silent.
Mike departed his friends and family—and the entire powerboating community—far too soon. But the legacy of love for his family and for performance boating endures, and the way he touched the lives of others is evident.
In the wake of Mike’s death, Outerlimits Powerboats started a memorial fund for his children. At an on-water Memorial Fun Run, more than 50 boats and 150 people came in support, raising nearly $20,000 for the family.
For more information about the Mike Fiore Children’s Trust Fund, visit YouCaring.com/FioreFamilyFund.
