Concept to Offer Diesel Power in 44-footer

ByMatt Trulio

Caught up with Susan Patterson, the vice president of sales and marketing for Concept Boats, for a story I’m writing on the company’s 44’ Sport Yacht. (The article will appear on Boats.com in October). The Opa-Locka, Fla., company has built eight 44-footer’s in a combination of T-top and fully-enclosed cockpit versions, to date. The most popular power choice has been triple 300-hp outboard engines.

Patterson said the company will soon offer the boat with diesel power. That’s a departure for Concept, which has historically gone the outboard-power route with its offerings.

“We’ve had requests for it, so we will build it,” she said. “We’re a semi-custom boat builder, so we’re more than willing to do things like that for our customers.”

The 44’ Sport Yacht was introduced two years ago at the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show.

Similar Posts

  • Cigarette Ad Art for Sale

    ByMatt Trulio

    Regardless of whether or not Cigarette is your favorite brand of high-performance boat, you can’t deny the success the Opa-Locka, Fla., company has had with its advertising campaigns. Cigarette didn’t invent the concept of using sex to sell products, but the company has done a bang-up job of it over the years.

    In the process, the boat builder has, at one time or another, raised the ire of just about everyone from local church groups to the former publisher of Powerboat magazine—Cigarette is one of the few companies to actually have an ad rejected by Powerboat. (That’s a little-known fact that my friend Skip Braver, the owner of Cigarette, still gives me a hard time about despite my lack of decision-making involvement in anything to do with the magazine’s advertising content.)

    In response to customer demand, according to a press release from the company, Cigarette Racing Team has launched its “Print Gallery,” which consists of poster-quality image prints from its advertising archives. Ad print sizes range from 8” x 10” to 20” x 30.” Prices range from $36 to $87 with the size of the print.The company also offers “logo standouts” from $65 to $185. In addition, Cigarette is offering matting and framing options.

  • Desert Storm Expanding in 2012

    ByMatt Trulio

    Caught up with Jim Nichols of Lake Racer LLC, the outfit that puts on Desert Storm in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., for a few minutes before the event’s poker run on Friday, April 29. The run was an hour away, and Nichols—still buzzing from the success of the previous night’s Street Party event—was already talking about possible improvements for next year.

    “We have some pretty good ideas like having a small-boat poker run earlier in the week, maybe adding a manufacturer’s poker run and maybe adding back the racing,” said Nichols. “We’ve talked about taking the Street Party to the golf course so everything is central in one place, but it’s also great to have it in town because it’s established there and because of the services, restaurants and stores, that are available there.”

  • Caveman Skater V-Bottom to Race Offshore

    ByMatt Trulio

    Caught up with Marc Granet, the driver of the turbine-powered Miss Geico offshore racing catamaran, earlier this morning. Granet told me that a Skater 399—the cat builder’s nearly 40-foot-long V-bottom offering—with twin 1,350-hp Chief engines will compete during the 2011 offshore racing season as the “Caveman” race boat. The actual class the boat will compete in will depend upon the technical rules of the sanctioning body for each race its team chooses to enter.

  • Endnote on Desert Storm: It’s Still Not a Race

    ByMatt Trulio

    A week ago today, offshoreonly.com was buzzing with the news that Predator, a Skater catamaran with twin 1,500-hp engines, was “first to the card stop” at the Desert Storm Poker Run on Lake Havasu. Given the quality of the 150-boat fleet, which included several boats capable of 170-plus mph—Predator reportedly hit 185 mph—that’s pretty impressive.

    And totally irrelevant, because getting anywhere “first” makes the journey a race and Desert Storm, like all poker runs, is not a race. Yes, that’s been said countless times before. You could even call it yesterday’s news. So why is it worth repeating?

    Because that mentality, though much diminished, still persists in some quarters.

  • Seven Pairs of Mercury Racing 1350s at Desert Storm

    ByMatt Trulio

    Last year during the Desert Storm event in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., I stood in front of the Mercury Racing trailer with company president Fred Kiekhaefer and ogled the company’s new twin-turbocharged, quad-overhead-cam 1350 engine. It was the second 1,350-hp model I’d seen—I caught the first one at the 2010 Miami International Boat Show two months earlier—and like the first it was on a stand. Production of the engine was slated for early fall.

  • StancCraft Considering a Wooden Catamaran

    ByMatt Trulio

    Of all the outstanding go-fast boats at Desert Storm event in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. last week, the one that captured some of the most attention was also one of the slowest. With a top speed of approximatley 55 mph, Tomahawk, an all-wood, handcrafted 29-foot-long “Torpedo” with a 550-hp Ilmor engine from StanCraft Boats in Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho, could hardly be described as fast. But it is, like all Stancraft creations, a work of art—and that wasn’t lost the Lake Havasu crowd.