August 1, 2021

European Centre Console

Centre console are increasing popularity in Europe, with two brands Fjord and Pardo taken the genre to new successes and creating a print of design for others to follow.  Pardo in particular has been immensely popular with its 43 model selling one hundred units in just a year from launch.

The European Centre Console has in the last ten to fifteen years become different to the American, with this latest starting as medium sized fishing machine, which at the start of the new millennium started to become bigger.  For a start the European CC has the deck reserved for entertainment, and the cabin space below offers more amenities.  Because of the more spacious cabin the European Centre Console has a higher freeboard.  This gives much more cabin space and for example a twelve meter made in EU cc will offer two cabins, or an open cabin sleeping four.  Another difference is that most European centre console are offered with an inboard stern drive propulsion first, with outboards option available.  The USA counter parts are all outboard powered, and very rare if any offer inboards.  Here the difference is performance, with European offers having a speed about forty knots, while the outboard powered USA models have speeds above fifty knots. 

Beside Fjord and Pardo, today we are seeing other European makers entering into the Centre Console. Cranchi has just launched its new A46 Tender, as did Cayman with its 400 Walkaround model.  Wally since a couple years part of the Ferretti Group has redesigned all its small sub fifteen meter models as a centre console, and are offered with an outboard choice.  Other new comers in the genre are Solaris, who entering into motor boating with the 55 to a lobster traditional yacht has since then started to offer centre consoles for all its sub seventeen meter models.  The Dutch Vanquish offers something in between to an open yacht and a centre console, and has also gained popularity in the USA.  

Azimut has a story of its own, presenting its first centre console the Atlantis Verve 36 in 2009.  The 36 eventually became a 40, with outboard power.  But the 47 launched in 2019 has changed the Verve looks. Outboard powered only, the Francesco Struglia designed Verve flagship has American performance looks, competing more with the likes of Cigarette, Intrepid, and Midnight Express.  Considering how performance centre consoles sell in the USA, the Midnight Express 43 is the best seller in its size for example, the Azimut strategy does make sense, as the Verve 47 has sold 45 units in its first year, and the upcoming 42 has sold ten units on plan.   

Beneteau Group who has always been in the centre console genre with the Jeanneau Cap Camarat range, which has expanded not little in the last years and today has the twelve meter 12.5 WA as flagship.  

A company which has also entered the genre early on was Fiart, this boat builder from Naples Italy presented the 33 SeaWalker intuitively in 2011, but after an outboard version was released nothing happened for some years.  That is until in 2020 when it launched the 43 Seawalker, with new Seawalker's 39 and 35 coming in 2021.   

Sessa has always produced centre consoles, creating change for the genre when it modernized its Key Largo range in the mid first decade of the new millennium.  With this it started to put the first input for the European Centre Console genre, so much is this that today most sub forty feet European outboard centre consoles have all that Sessa and Christian Grande influence. Sessa Key Largo range is still present with the company launching a new KL40 flagship in 2020. 

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