In a post on its social media page on seventeen March Sea Ray celebrated Fifty years of its Sundancer line. Fifty years is not easy to do for a boat company let alone one of its lines, but the Sundancer has actually made it into its Golden Anniversary. The Sea Ray Sundancer is probably one of the most famous sport cruiser model line name to have long existed, as introduced by original Sea Ray founder Cornelius Nathaniel Ray III, before selling the company with his name to Brunswick in 1986 for 350 million US dollars.
To be fair to Sea Ray it is actually a bit more then fifty years, as the first Sundancer arrived in 1981 when the SRV 310 Sundancer debuted. A year later the SRV 270 Sundancer is presented, with the 340 Sundancer, the first Sundancer without the SRV arriving in the fall of 1984. This was followed a year later by the first generation 300 Sundancer, and the 268 Sundancer in 1986, this model being one of Sea Ray's best and most selling boat in the eighties and of all time. Excluding the two SRVs about eighty different Sundancer models have been made till today, varying in length from 21 to 63 foot in these fifty years, and delivered in thousands of units in total.
Taking away the past successes and impressive statistics of years gone by, the Sundancer line has been shrinking since the end of the twenty-tens decade, and today offers only three models from 26 to 37 foot. If you asked me that Sea Ray would offer only three Sundancer's some years ago I would have said this to be impossible, in what used to be in its peak a model in every two foot upwards of 24 till about fifty feet. The Sundancer was the North American boat dream of most families, and dominated the Sea Ray line up for four decades, But today the interest from Sea Ray to the Sundancer is probably more about nostalgia then anything else, as the brand seems more interested in pushing its bow rider SLX line, as the sport cruiser series sits in its lowest position ever.
It is true that the North American boater needs and wants sub fifty foot have changed a lot in the past decade, with the rise of the center console and dual console boats taking over this part of the market. But how Brunswick and Sea Ray has not managed to keep the Sundancer relative is something difficult to understand. Considering also that most North American players in the segment have disappeared, leaving a less competitive sport cruiser market, these being Cruisers and its line up of cruisers and yachts from eleven to eighteen meters, and Regal which offers a complete line up from 24 to 42 foot in two lines. In the nineties their used to be a never ending offer from US boat builders in the sport cruiser segment; Bayliner, Carver, Chaparral, Chris Craft, Doral, Formula, Four Winns, Mainship, Maxum, Monterey, Rinker, Tiara, Wellcraft. Some of these have disappeared, most of them following the Great Recession of 2008, while others have focused on other segments of the market, with some still offering a sport cruiser model or two for the nostalgias.
Design evolution and what current generation boaters want is large more party orientated cockpits, something Sea Ray is offering to a certain extent with the latest 320 and 370 Sundancer models. But trying not to expand more on these new generation Sundancers, along with the cabin comfort associated from the name into larger models and a more complete line up is beyond understanding, considering also how the name resonates in the American pleasure boating story. It is like the Sundancer reset button was pressed in 2018 when the new 320 arrived, but then Sea Ray forgot why it pressed it.
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