American yacht builders played a leading role in “big boat” construction in the second half of the 20th century. But not anymore. What we’re left with is imported boats divorced from Americans’ tastes. Boats that look like boats shouldn’t. What happened, and how do we return to more rational yacht design?
What’s a “big boat?” For the purpose of discussion let’s say 55 feet and over, and not a center console. From the 1950s through the 1990s storied American yacht builders Wheeler, Chris-Craft, Bertram, and Hatteras reigned, declined, and exited the motoryacht market altogether. We still have Viking thriving in the big-boat market but they strictly build sportfishing yachts.
The most prominent example of the decline in the American motoryacht market has to be Hatteras. Class-leading Hatteras motoryachts of 53 to 80 feet from the 1970s onward dominated the American motoryacht market with their novel twin-engine-room layouts and “same sausage, different length” designs. But they were only mildly updated through the decades until the early 2000s. By then the market had moved on and America’s largest motoryacht builder began its initial descent. And now, nobody builds large production motoryachts in America in 2025.
Labor costs and global currency fluctuations play their roles, certainly. But if those were the only factors, the likes of Hatteras and Bertram would be building shiploads of American-styled boats in Turkey today, just as Apple primarily builds their California-designed phones in China.
There’s more to it than that. Global consumer styling tastes have regressed, and boats are suffering for it. Why? For some perspective, a reference from philosopher Ayn Rand can help. (Stick with me here.) In her 1962 work, The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age, she explains how art had devolved from beautiful sculptures, buildings and paintings to ugly contemporary garbage as the result of the end of an “age of reason.” Rand identified just three human eras driven by reason: ancient Greece, the renaissance, and the 19th century trailing off into the early 20th. She argued that the regression of art in our age is a symptom of a wider regression from reason to collectivism which “undertook the task once more of degrading man.” Since beauty is rare, ugly shall be exalted.
Rand explains that a rational man finds inspiration in excellence, while an irrational person sees excellence as a reminder of his or her failures. They feel, effectively, “I am not that bad” when they see a plus-sized, purple-haired model on a fashion runway instead of Kate Moss. Consumers make accidental confessions when they proclaim their taste in fashion, art, and the yachts they buy.
Okay, the morel mushrooms have worn off and your trusty yacht designer is back at the keyboard. How does this get us from a sexy Rybovich cockpit motoryacht to an absolute navy of floating turds?
Global car design trends precede those of the marine industry by years. So it took the rise of collectivist China as the world’s largest car market to make BMWs uglier than they used to be. Chinese customers have driven BMW’s grill design for a decade now. Cars have looked increasingly “angry” for 15 years. Since yacht styling follows global car design trends by about 5 years, we now have “purple hair” boats imported from Turkey, Italy, and greater Uglistan. The undisciplined Italian styling zeal is often tone-deaf to real life at sea. (It was an 63-foot Lamborghini-branded Italian yacht that sank in Miami in May.) Third-rate yachtbuilding countries make attempts at mimicking Italian overstyle, often with regrettable results.
Let’s have a return to elegance. When we launched the beautiful new Wheeler 55 motoryacht last summer, her owner said, “I’m sure when you see the 55, that boat will be the most unique boat at any marina on the East Coast.” Why? Because she’s just plain classy.
Reject the unfortunately-styled boats. Walk away from the me-too Italianesque styling that makes every boat look like a running shoe or the box it came in. Shape hulls and decks with respect for the seas they will encounter. And let’s build more of them here in America again.
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This article originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
