Five car brands that gave boats a go

Japanese luxury car brand Lexus is about to reveal its first foray into the world of high-end luxury motor yachting with its first product, the Lexus LY650.

While it may be a first for them, it’s not the first time a car brand has crawled from land onto the water.

Lexus didn’t have to look far for inspiration, either; Toyota has been in the boat-building game since 1997, making a range of cruisers and recreational boats. Some are even powered by the same engine used in the Toyota LandCruiser.

This got us thinking, what other car brands out there have tried to expand into boats, and for those who did, can it be regarded as a success or a failure? Here are the top five most unusual car brand tie-ins with boats according to boatsales.com.au.

Italian sportscar stallion Ferrari once jumped in bed with fellow Italian boat-maker Riva to create a high-speed floating grappa bar called, the Riva Ferrari 32.

Looking like a blushing day boat, the late 1980s-era Riva Ferrari 32 didn’t even tap Maranello’s engine-making division to stump up an appropriate engine; instead, it used a pair of 290kW 8.0-litre  BPM Vulcano V8s.

The rouge Riva, sporting what the accompanying marketing scree said was an F1-inspired forward-leaning wing across the top of the front seats, was born from an age where Ferrari was dominating grand prix racing and extracting maximum value from the brand in any way, shape or boat-related form it could.

Only 40 in Ferrari red were built, and you could only buy one if you already owned either a Ferrari road car or Riva motor yacht. It was sold as more than just a day-tripper, with a pair of berths in the bow providing overnight accommodations for signore e signora.

Wow factor: Just like tuna is to chicken, the Riva Ferrari 32 is the Testarossa of the sea
Win or lose?: We reckon the Acer Ferrari One laptop was a much wiser investment

General Motors is a pretty big company, so it makes sense for it to diversify out of car-making and into other things.

Early this year, we were surprised to learn that GM owned a boat-making company. We were even more surprised when we learned that its first product, called Forward Marine First, was an electric-engined pontoon party boat.

The aluminium twin-hulled boat was built so that GM could gauge customer interest in the idea that up to a dozen people could punt along slowly on a lake or river for up to 10 hours at a time.

The Forward Marine First uses the same 60kWh battery pack that was developed for the Chevrolet Bolt, and takes about eight hours to recharge once you’re tied back up dockside.

Wow factor: You won’t cop any exhaust fumes as you sip your chardonnay and gaze at the battery pack silently providing electric motivation beneath a see-through floor
Win or lose?: Where’s the fun in going nowhere fast?

Back in the days that Australia still hosted annual car extravaganzas, hot-tune chop shop Holden Special Vehicles wanted something that would wow audiences who came to its stand at the 2001 Sydney Motor Show. It had to, as Holden was about to release the reborn, show-stealing Monaro.

Its idea was to turn to Albury-based Malibu Boats, and work collaboratively on a bespoke one-off creation built around a Malibu Response ski boat called the HSV – Response R8.

The HSV version of the Malibu – you couldn’t pick it for anything else given it looks as though a box of HSV branding stickers was upended on it – was powered by a 5.7-litre Indmar/Malibu alloy LS1 Corvette engine producing 275kW at 5200rpm and 533Nm at 4800rpm when fitted with HSV’s quad exhausts.

For the show, the boat was hooked up to a HRT-styled HSV Maloo ute concept boasting a 350kW LS6 6.2-litre V8. The boat’s trailer even featured the same alloy wheels as the ute.

Wow factor: Right up there with the Atomic Banana
Win or lose?: It’s now HSV’s rarest and most desirable model

Cigarette boats – long, low and narrow – were once the bad boys of the boating world. Looking fast even while standing still, the distinctive North American boats have their origins in the fast-paced world of rum smuggling, and later drug running. Time is money, after all.

Today, a US boat-maker named Cigarette Racing earns its pin money by dragging the nostalgia of outrunning the cops into the modern age, featuring big boats packed with thousands of horsepower.

For the last three years, it has joined forces with Mercedes-Benz’s performance specialist arm, Mercedes-AMG, to build one-off boats that eschew the delights of high-end luxury with ballistic straight-line performance.

Its latest is the Carbon Edition, a dark and sinister model built in celebration of the release of the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door sports coupe.

Made largely of carbon-fibre, it is fitted with 1200kW of specialist Mercury Racing outboard engines capable of a top speed of 130km/h.

That’s sort of exciting until you realise the year before, in celebration of the announcement that Mercedes-AMG was working on the Project One hypercar, Cigarette Racing rolled out a boat packing a jaw-dropping 2300kW and a more than 220km/h top speed.

Wow factor: No one has ever seen a Mercedes-AMG on the road and thought "meh"
Win or lose?: Who brings out a new boat that has less performance than the previous year’s?

Let’s admit it, Aston Martin pens some remarkable cars. Kick tyres in any high-end Aston Martin showroom and you’ll soon be wanting to take the lot home with you.

In 2017, Aston Martin added a boat to its product mix, the Aston Martin AM37. Well, it engaged a naval architect to draw one up as Aston Martin designers looked over his shoulder, and then asked around for a boat-making yard willing to build it to Aston’s exacting standards.

That yard turned out to be Dutch shipwrights Quintessence. According to its website, the Aston Martin AM37 is the only boat it builds.

Two versions are available. One is the AM37, powered by – depending on how far Sir’s budget extends – a pair of 270kW or 320kW diesel engines that make them the only diesel models in the entire Aston Martin range. The other, the AM37 S, uses a pair of 390kW petrol-fuelled engines to clip along over the water at around at a smidge over 90km/h.

Sadly, though, you look at the boat and the first thought that springs to mind is that Aston Martin’s entire DB11 design team must have had that particular week off.

Wow factor: Never saw one of these in a Bond film, have you?
Win or lose?: It’s hard to fit one of these in the garage at home. Let’s leave it at that.

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