Whatever Happened to Entry-Level Performance Boats?
There’s a shortage of new entry-level performance boats, but help is on the way.
November 26, 2011
Back in the day—four words that guarantee a writer is about to wax nostalgic—there were a bunch of manufacturers that made entry-level, single-engine performance boats. They were the “fun little hot rods” of the go-fast boat world, and they came from Baja, Checkmate, Donzi, Fountain, Scarab and a host of others. But in the last five years, with the exception of Checkmate and the eventual planned comeback of Baja, they’ve all but disappeared.
For the relaunch of the Baja line, the company started with the 26-foot Outlaw.
Oh, you can still find them all right—in the “For Sale by Owner” section of websites such as this one.
And that’s a shame, because entry-level—meaning reasonably priced and moderately powered—performance boats are pretty much where everyone starts when they get into high-performance boating. Eric Colby, my first editor at Powerboat magazine, had a little 17-footer. Dave Patnaude, the president of the New Jersey Performance Powerboat Club, started with a 22-foot Scarab. Their stories are not unique.
New entry-level models brought new blood into the market in a relatively—key word here—inexpensive way. Now they’re gone, and more than a few people in the industry are a tad concerned about it.
“If there’s going to be a resurgence in the high-performance market, it’s got to come from the entry level,” says Paul Ray, the president of Ilmor Marine in Plymouth, Michigan. “You can’t finance a big boat—you can’t finance almost any boat now. But if you’re going to have a chance of financing a new boat, which is where the new customers are going to come from, it’s got to be with smaller, more practical boats. Ultimately, those buyers will move up to bigger boats.
“But this industry will die—it will die—if the manufacturers don’t start paying attention to the smaller-boat market,” he added.
It takes a long progression, which begins with an entry-level model, before you can move up to something like a 50-foot Mystic catamaran with 3000-hp worth of turbine engines.
Strong words, for sure, but words that a lot of longtime players in this industry happen to agree with. Among them is Doug Smith, owner and president of Checkmate Power Boats in Bucyrus, Ohio, and the founder and former owner of Baja Marine:
“In the field research I’ve done, it seems that the under-30-foot market is selling, but the over-30-foot market is very slow, and anything that’s being sold is at huge discounts. So we’re concentrating on smaller models.”
Smith is putting his money where his mouth is, so to speak. Late last year, his company introduced a 20-foot V-bottom called the 2000 BRX. With a 115-hp Mercury outboard, it’s priced at $29,995.
Earlier this summer, Checkmate finished the tooling for a new 26-footer with MerCruisier 8.2 Mag engine as base power and a sticker price in the $70,000 range. With that power, the boat should run at nearly 70 mph.
There’s also movement at Baja, which, frankly, languished after its acquisition by Fountain before both companies, as well as Donzi and Pro-Line, became the properties of Liberty Associates. The first Liberty-built Baja, a 26’ Outlaw model, was completed this summer, and three more Baja models—a 23’ Outlaw, a 247 Islander and a 277 Islander—are in production.
The Checkmate 2000 BRX lists for less than $30,000.
According to John Walker of Liberty Associates, domestic and international demand for the Baja line is strong. “The biggest problem we’re having is that everybody wants them right now,” he says.
The reason for such pent-up demand, which Checkmate and Baja are rushing to fill (and will be far ahead of the game if they can pull it off) is obvious: The performance-boat market needs, and always will need, entry-level boats.
No one in his right mind, even someone with stupid money and a death wish, starts with a 50-foot catamaran that runs 180 mph and costs $1 million—as his first boat. Of course there are exceptions, but the rule in the performance world has been that you start with a single-engine V-bottom, then move to a twin and, if your wallet can handle it and you develop the required skills, you move up to something to exotic.
It’s called progression, and it works.
The funny thing is, when you talk to the guys who own the really wild, big-power catamarans and V-bottoms and ask them about their first boat, they invariably talk about something small and a little underpowered. And they smile at the memories of the hours they spent and the fun they had in their first entry-level go-fast boats. It was simple and fun—and it led them to where they are now.
—Matt Trulio
