How old is classic???

[jeepster]

How old does your boat have to be before it can be be considered a classic boat???

[Classic fever]

That's a great question, I've looked for a definitive answer on this before for cars and boats. The tax man classes cars over 25 years old as "Classic" for road tax purposes, but I suspect the true meaning of classic is not just age, but also likely to depend on the heritage of a brand or make. Looking forward to seeing what others think.

[Healey75]

My view is a classic boat has to be different/interesting to the current pointy stuff that began to appear in the 70's, some of our boats were still in production then and can be much newer than 70's although an old classic design... there's no real cut off date to my mind but it should show some of the design evolution of power boats be it hull shape, decks/interior, engines etc ie not modern stuff...no help here then !!

[Sicobra]

I think you will find that the tax man doesn't base a classic car on being 25 years old or older, he, much to the annoyance of some car owners, bases it on being pre 1971 in order to qualify for road fund exemption.
Some people don't rate an old Marina or Cortina as being a classic but even the most mundane old vehicle is a link to our transport history and in my mind has a claim to be a classic and I think the same as far as boats are concerned, 25 years old may be a bit soon but over 30 must qualify. What I do find interesting is that some vehicles which have had the most influence on society, say the bog standard Cortina, are often rarer in proportion than an equivalent super car from the same year but still have a low value and in some instances it seems the same to me with boats.

[jeepster]

My personal definition would have been anything over 25 years old but as you say age isn't the whole story and my story is complicated by the fact that my boat is either a Marina boats Ltd Marina 16, or a Hemming and Morris Marina 16 GT, or an Arran 17!...All seemingly identical boats but by three different makers and produced from sometime in the 1970's up to somewhere in the mid 1980's.
The design has a beautiful, unique and easily recognisable hull shape which I think can probably be considered a classic on design alone:







Sadly, there is no plate or other ID on mine to say who built it, or when, so it would be great if anyone here can shed more light on the above boats, including their chronology.

[se7en]

Hemmings and Morris built a range of boats they marketed as Marina boats, there was then a name change some time later to marina boats, Jeff Hemmings was still the M.D. your boat is a 16GT, I know nothing about the Arron 17, I knew Jeff Hemmings, his boats were well made, and your 16GT would take a big H.P. by standards of the day, something like 100H.P......thats a lot on a little family cruiser.....!! however, you must remember your boat could be anything up to 40 years old, and as well built as they were , you should have a good look at the transom and floor stringers, to make sure that the wood renforcements are sound, most have had water ingress by know.
The 16GT came out in about 1970, it has quite a deep V hull for a small family cruiser , I think Jeff raced one for a season back in the early to mid seventies, can't remember what motor it ran or how well it did,he would have had something around 100h.p. on it, Jeff always tried to race one of his range of boats, it was good advertising in those days.

[jeepster]

Thanks for the info...Hemming and Morris are actually still going today and are still in the same premises but they have long since stopped making boats...These days they specialise in supplying shop fittings/fitouts.
I can fully understand you not knowing anything about the Arran 17 as I didn't know anything about it either till about a week ago.
I saw one on ebay and noticed the seller had supplied his phone number but when I called to tell the seller he was mistaken and that his boat was actually a Marina 16 and not an Arran 17, he didn't take it very kindly...He said I didn't know anything and then he became quite rude.
He refused to discuss it any further so I wondered if perhaps he was right and if it was me that was mistaken...I rang Arran boats to ask if they had ever made an Arran 17 and was supprised to hear that they had done in the past but not for a long time now...So it seems the seller could have been correct!
Its possible that Arran boats may have made their own moulds from a Marina 16 hull and topsides and made copies, even whilst Marina 16's were still in production, or perhaps H&M sold them their moulds when they gave up boat building?...Without hearing the actual history from someone like Jeff Hemmings its impossible to say.
Anyway, about the transom...Mine is heavily reinforced with steel beams, not wood. There is a length of 100 mm x 100 mm x 10 mm steel angle right across the top of the splashwell where it meets the transom and there more steel members under the splashwell too.
The previous owner told me that the boat used to have a 90hp outboard on the back but the boat was originally only designed for a 50hp outboard, and this lead me to think that the steel reinforcements were there simply to allow the 90hp outboard to be used without ripping the transom off the boat...Now that you say it can take a 100hp outboard at standard, I am not so sure...I was considering reducing Jeepsters weight by removing all the heavy steel reinforcements in the back, but I was worried that it might seriously weaken the transoms engine capacity by doing so...Now im not so worried.

[water_buoy]

I like to think of my boat as a "classic" although technically it was built in 2012 and so probably the newest boat in the CMBA! I always like to think of classics by the way they are styled but I'd say the 25 year bracket sounds about right

[sean-nós]

Same here as water-buoy new boat but 50's design with an old outboard and some of the wood came from a classic boat that got washed up on the beach Happy Day

[happyguts]

a boat that retains its appeal after it is no longer produced , I would say that the appeal of a boat is determined by the individual. Some people find a fletcher ( dare I say delta ...lol...see old thread ) appealing , a classic boat is one that stops depreciating in value and either levels off or begins to appreciate over time