Respecting Your Roots

With many boat builders having thirty, forty, fifty years or more behind them I see little of them respecting there past.  Yet without it would they have arrived where they are now.  Your brand was actually created by that first model you made, and what followed after that and how each model represented a step in an evolution to improve boating for you and your clients.  

Some months ago in a video interview of Norberto Ferretti it was nice to see him say the story of how the first 38 model came into existence, and that the mould and boat was actually designed by Fabio Buzzi, for legendary multi winning Italian performance boat builder Cigala and Bertinetti, who competed for a Military boat contract which did they not get.  This 38 was Ferretti first production motor boat made in three variants over the years, and now I can understand why in the eighties the North Adriatic boat builder did get a fame for a solid sea-keeping boat, considering who was behind there first boat design and for what it was created. 

Fast forward to today and I actually like to see what Riviera who will celebrate forty years in 2021 is doing on its Facebook social media platform, with a brief story to come on each model it launched so far.  This posting started on 22 August with its first 38 Mark 1 model which launched Riviera and sold in 36 units in a six year production run before it evolved into the Mk.2.  Following this I would suggest Riviera to do a page on its website about all its previous models with some basic technical information and production run and numbers sold.  I would actually suggest this to all boat builders.  For those that follow Riviera, the Australian boat builder was already giving random historical model information on its monthly newsletter, which was my favourite peace of literature in the e-mail.  

This is not the first time a boat builder does this, Riva and Italcraft had similar data on past website versions, which unfortunately is not there anymore.  I think in the case of the above two, it is a double let down since both builders represent an important core of motor boating story and evolution both from the design and technical point of view.  While Ferretti did something similar during its fifty years anniversary some ten years ago, which unfortuntatly was removed.  Sunseeker does also give a short history which starts in 1999 on the website, but in reality the boat launched its first model in 1969 with the 17 Soverign under the Poole Powerboats badge.  True story in the official website Sunseeker also has a wrong photo of the 1999 to 2001 Predator 60, shown as the 2009 to 13 shall we call it Mk.2 produced version.  Then we have Princess which while not offering anything about its history directly, it largest dealer co.uk does offer a history of all the models most with a picture and some technical detail of what it produced since its founding in 1965.