Thanks guys, great info

Good morning Horst and Thomas,

Well I waited until I could get to a computer rather than an iPhone to view the images and the thumbnails Horst sent are so small and pixelated I can not see any real detail. Horst, if you can send larger images that would be great. Thomas, thanks for the info, your comment about "10 years ago" there was some sort of documentation about the old CC molds is very interesting. What do you know about that?

I do know from the source, that when CC pulled out of Italy Herb Pocklington had already gone on to Hatteras, but CC "pulled out of Italy in the night" apparently leaving some unpaid bills, etc., and there is no telling what happened to the molds or if other boats were manufactured from them with another brand name, etc.

The boat Horst has is interesting because there are no other ORAV boats listed in the US Essential Guide except the 23' V-drive Lancer Premiere/Custon Super Sport of 1970, which was actually a rebadged 23 Commander after the Commander officially ran its course as a 1968 and 1969 model.

When I first got the message from Horst, I thought we had another 20 Corsair like the one reported from Croatia, but this boat is much different and it looks basically like a blend of 19' US Lancer with an Italian 23 Monte Carlo twist, with V-drive.

From what I can see, and admittedly, the photos are tough to see detail, it looks like Horst has a V-drive boat with an aft sun pad. If this is the case then it follows the Italian format Herb Pocklington initiated after seeing what Carlo Riva was doing in wood. Herb told me he asked his manufacturing and design guys to come up with a boat like that and they did, called the 23 Monte Carly, essentially another rebadged 23 Commander with V-drive and we have seen a few come up here on THE FORUM; one in Spain, one in France. Herb told me his staff was concerned about the liability of a boat of this nature with a sun pad and they added side safety rails, still a concern but Herb said "build it". Now we see another boat if similar style with a sun pad, and it is one of few that got the feature, as we only seem to have one model here in the US that had that feature and it was not all that popular as it was on the Riviera in the Mediterranean, and that is the 19' XK-19 of 1970 - 1975

Thomas you mentioned the boat Horst has is a version of that boat, which makes sense. Looking at the XK-19 data I was suprised to find yet another entry for a ORAV-19 model, which may actually be the same wetted hull configuration Horst has in Italian topsides, which is noted as a 1970 v-drive model, ORAV-19, did not have the siesta padded upholstery on the aft deck, and was powered by a CC 327QA motor.

Herb told me that US Chris Craft was controlled by Harry Coll, and European Chris Craft was controlled by him; the two companies were certainly related but they were (by international law) independent on operations, etc. Therefore Herb was able to produce hybrid boats using US molds but with different topsides and all of the US motors and such, but the manufacture and sales, tax reporting, etc., were all regulated by Italian and European law.

Since CC used the "shoebox construction technique" where the basic hull and motor remained the same, but a new topside casting could be added to make the boat either a XK-19 or a 19' Lancer, it allowed Europe to experiment with many different designs that were suited for their own market. The 20' Corsair for instance, never reached the US, but was designed specifically for Europe, using this same basic hull but with outdrive.

Regards,

Paul
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