GT35 for a £140K anyone...................
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JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
A forumite who had done a proper trip on her reported that the sails were cheap and ill-setting. I wonder if they have been replaced, or if a potential purchaser needs to factor in a new set.
pvb
Well-Known Member
It's been for sale for so long that I wonder whether a silly offer might be accepted?
Tranona
Well-Known Member
Would imagine the current owner already thinks it is a silly price as it likely cost more than twice as much as that to build, never mind the design and development costs plus the moulds! Maybe including the moulds might be a sweetener for somebody to buy the whole project.
guardian
Well-Known Member
Theres nothing to lose in making the approach and seeing how there seems no let up in the blood bath that is secondhand boat prices, why not?
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Asking price in the on-line version of Snooks' YM review was £316,230 inc VAT and the base price in the YW test was £240,500 + VAT, so yes, £140,00 is - comparatively speaking - a bit of a bargain. In the sense of a less gor-blimey-yer-'aving-me-on-guv expensive.
I wonder if it is being sold by the heirs of the original owner or if anyone else has bought it meantime.
pvb
Well-Known Member
The original list price was surely aspirational? After all, the boat is substantially similar to many AWBs, including my Bavaria Cruiser 37 - which is about a third of the price. As for the original owner, wasn't that the guy who runs Windboats, the builders of the boat?
Tranona
Well-Known Member
If I was not already "suited" as they say in the trade, I might be tempted to make an offer. I rather like the interior being very similar in looks to my own boat, and spec much the same on paper. However mine was less than a third of the price when new at roughly the same time. Big premium to pay for the kudos of having a Jones designed boat put together by "craftsmen" rather than a Farr designed boat put together by machines with a bit of help from some operatives.
dunedin
Well-Known Member
It’s a lovely boat for somebody at that price. When I looked at it at Southampton it seemed a well thought out boat and good practical layout. Plus the pedigree of a great designer.
The sails are not a big deal, as easily replaced if indeed there is anything seriously wrong with them. And a bit of personalisation with pictures and even, shock horror, cushions, would lift the interior which is neat but a little sterile.
The sails are not a big deal, as easily replaced if indeed there is anything seriously wrong with them. And a bit of personalisation with pictures and even, shock horror, cushions, would lift the interior which is neat but a little sterile.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Yes, the one and only GT35 seems to have been bought by Mark Funnell, who owned Windboats and died in 2012. I'm sure it was and is a nice boat, but the price was simply outrageous for something which, for all its other qualities, looked like something from about 1992.Still, the GT35 debâcle pretty comprehensively debunked the notion that there would be a market for lovingly hand-crafted versions of older designs ...
... and the problem is that, as of course you know, in most respects machines do a far, far better job that skilled craft workers, and in a fraction of the time. Some things are best done by hand, for the moment anyway, but the high price of a GT35 (or a Rustler, or a Fairline or, relatively speaking, a Drascombe) reflects the amount of time for which you are paying skilled workers to run up and down ladders, checking that things fit and adjusting them when they don't. Machines get it right first time.
Yes, if it's not too knackered it is coming down to the sort of price where it might have sold new. Still perhaps £20k to go, though.
Seven Spades
Well-Known Member
Actually I don't agree. This project failed because of lack of money and a few poor choices at the time. When it was launched Rustler launched the Rustler 37 at almost the same price point, designed by the same designer. The concepts were very similar Rustler was going to make "Starlight 37.5, but decided against it and built Rustler instead.
When the boat was shown it was clear that is was a very high quality build with one or two poor design choices, which could easily have been fixed on hull No2. If you look at Gunfleet 1, the second boat had a number of changes and that is what needed to happen to GT yachts GT35 but it didn't happen. If you read the review in YBW they we please with its performance and build quality. Between the lines I think that the style was not appealing. If you had the money you would have bough the Rustler rather than taking a chance on the GT. I feel really sorry that it didn't work. I think that the financial assult on the middle classes really didn't help at all.
doug748
Well-Known Member
Selling an expensive boat that looked like every other cheap one was a brave move but the market was not there. Still that's not the fault of the boat; as a cruiser it is two or three notches above the usual offerings so someone will have a cracking buy.
Not me though.
Not me though.
guardian
Well-Known Member
Too right seeing as its £20K cheaper than a Bav37, but it does rather reinforce the point about the market though eh?
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Yes, but the Rustler 37 is a much more classic and, by implication, classy design. People pay more for that, just as they pay more for Morgans than for MX-5s. The GT35 had none of that style - it was a very bland, very expensive AWB.
The only fixable significant poor design choice was the remarkably bland, "£320k for that" interior. The exterior was never going to look like a third of a million pounds' worth.
Agreed, twice.
Is that the new price for a Bavaria 37? If so, comparing it with a five year old GT35 may be a little unfair. Spares and factory backup for the Bavaria will be infinitely better, too.
Don't get me wrong ... it's approaching a great buy, for someone who doesn't mind bland, but that just shows how insanely overpriced it was at almost two and a half times as much.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
When it was new in 2014 you could buy a fully loaded Bav 33 for under £100k and a 37 for around £125k.
It is of course a couple of notches up and might have justified a price around £200k at the time for a well specced boat. what really kills small volume production boats is the price of the "extras" this boat had extras that added over £70k to the base price which is roughly twice what similar extras would cost on a mass produced boat. When i bought my boat I priced an upmarket boat comparable in size and this is what I found. Things like bow thrusters, fancy props, instrument systems, heating etc using similar, and often the same components were often twice the price.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Probably because at Windboats each of these things is a huge amount of running up and down ladders, sucking teeth and so on, whereas at Bavaria it's clicking a check box on the factory computer system.
Tranona
Well-Known Member
Exactly. I have fond memories of the Northshore factory when they were building the later models and listening to them saying proudly how everything was individually "crafted" which meant putting in most of the interior and services after the hull and deck were joined. So fitting a bow thruster was an individual job. Seem to remember it was a £6k option for the same unit on a 32 that was £3.5k in a Bavaria. The markup on simple options like feathering prop was 50% as they tried to claw back some of the losses on actually building boats.
Joker
Well-Known Member
Is it just me, or does the jib sheeting in that photo look wrong?
Lucky Duck
Well-Known Member
The jib clew and the car don't appear to match up!
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
I have a Northshore-built boat. It's very nicely done, but you can see why she cost 50% more new than a Centaur of the same size and displacement ...