Need for Speed Is Back

In the eighties a challenge started out between a few yacht builders to make big and ultra fast yachts in the market.  Italcraft launched it's challenge with the M78, a 21 meters flybridge motor yacht presented in 1985 which reached 58 knots.  Alfamarine responded some years later with the two meters smaller one-off made 65 flybridge model from 1991, which with triple 1000hp engines and surface drives reached a top speed of 64 knots during a light test run, four knots more over it's declared top speed of sixty knots.  

Interestingly while both these yachts received a lot off attention at the time, the success was not big, with Italcraft selling only two units of the M78, and then revising the platform for the slower and similar looking C70 and then reused for the 70 Drago in the noughties. While Alfamarine made only one unit of the 65, with the hull of that one coming from the 55 as designed by Franco Harrauer, and then used also for the 58 and 60 models.  For a time the speed in sport yachts settled and even the fast offerings from successful sport yacht builders like AB Yachts, Baia, Magnum, Otam, or Pershing stopped in around the fifty knots mark.    

Thirty years later the need for speed is back with new arrival Bolide Yachts and its first 80 model, setting new high unimaginable numbers for a 24 meter super sport yacht.  The Bolide 80 not only goes beyond sixty knots, but reaches a top speed of 73 knots, equivalent to 84 mph.  These are speeds a super fast thirteen meter centre console weighing in at about ten tons with six Mercury racing outboards reaches. Incredible speeds for this project by Brunello Acampora, and even more outstanding when you think that the closest production yacht above 24 meters, the AB Yachts 100 with the Superfast option is thirteen knots behind.  

Is the need for speed back?  Are we heading into a new super sport yacht speed race?  Just as much as I would like it, this is difficult to happen, and like those Italcraft and Alfamarine models from the eighties found out, the hyper fast is and will remain a niche. It is a small niche which has its crowd, and many admire it, but when it comes to signing the dotted line it remains something for the few.  For now, well done to Brunello Acampora, it will be interesting to see if Bolide Yachts will have a challenger worth of note in the future.