The Chris Craft pictured is about a 23 footer and is fairly rare. This one most likely has a direct shaft drive because of the prop tunnel shown. These are interesting Chris Crafts though. Most were set-up with a I/O while a few were with the tunnel shaft direct drives and just also a few were made with a Vee Drive arrangement. A couple were said to be shipped factory installed with twin I/Os.

The hulls design was penned by Jim Wynne with the deck styling by Dick Avery. While this is a runabout utility design shown in my very blurry photos, this size was both made longer and shorter in length and in various configurations. Some even had a small bridge!

Power was all over the place. Think perhaps Chris Craft, OMC, Transdrive, Eaton, Interceptor, Volvo, Buick, Volvo, or Chevy engines. All sizes of engines are rumored. In line 4 cyl (the twin engine set-up), a single V-6, small block Chevy, and a very few with 427 engines. I really do not think all these were offered, but perfect research is hard to come by.

One thing is for sure, everyone talks about a nice ride. It’s the reason for the bigger sized production run of about 2,500 units over the ten-eleven year production run. The vast majority were made in Chris Craft’s Cortland, NY, USA plant with a few made in Chris Craft’s Fiumicino Italian plant.

Where else can one come across so much information about power boats of all vintage and type?

seabuddy.net?

Perhaps Troop needs to lend a few photo pointers!!

Available in I/O, direct drive or V-drive. You don't see that anymore I think.

That's on the back burner for a bit, right now.

Chris Craft still makes deep vee runabouts...

http://www.chriscraft.com/launch_22_oview.aspx

How much of these designs and bottom molds were carried over when OMC bought Chris Craft and then Genmar bought Chris Craft then the current owners bought them remains an unknown to me.

I do know that they added a flat or pad to the stern of smallest model to cure the slow to bring the nose down issue.

I would say nothing is a carry over from Genmar. I belive Feretti Yatchs now owns the Chris Craft name. Thus the rapaid departure from the styles of the Genmar era. A much better and very pricy boats now.

The current 22' - 25' - 28' runabout boat styles in the launches (that almost all know and love) were designed while it was a OMC company, is my understanding. When Genmar owned it, the company was shut down/not making boats, is also my understanding.

Seems I recall that Genmar basically sold Chris Craft as an unneeded entity when they bought the OMC brands.

I doubt very much the boat we are are seeing from Chris Craft now could be linked to any Genmar designs