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I can't believe yet ANOTHER "baja" underdog thread,blah,blah,blah,get over it,Smitty:p

Cig or Fountain w/o merc power... is it possible direct from the dealer?(not including a lipship).

I think the term for these boats are semi custom.
I don't think any will move a main bulkhead or change the deck for 1 customer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by articfriends (Post 2165138)

I can't believe yet ANOTHER "baja" underdog thread,blah,blah,blah,get over it,Smitty:p

If it wasn't Baja,
It would be Fountain,
Or just say the word APACHE...

Maybe it would be a better reference to say "Hand Made" versus "Assembly Line" boats. Each model of boat, IE Topgun, Lightning, etc. has the same deck and hull as the next one that was built in the same year or group of years. They will even have the same interior layout and seats. The only differences will be the colors, hardware and maybe the interior materials used. I can go to Baja and "custom" order one with the colors, pattern and power that I want. Should that not make it a custom boat?? Its still gonna be built on an assembly line. But it will be custom to my specs.

And if it needs to be said. I hAVE A 88 240 SPORT that everyone things is only a few years old. Thats with 500 hours. I do agree that I would prefer to have a different brand only for the reason that there are alot of Bajas where I live and would like something different. But that is the only reason. If there would be alot of Cigs locally, I wouldnt want one for the same reason.

Quote:

Originally Posted by epeek (Post 2164781)

I could say about ALL brands. Cig & OL included. Hey
a top gun is a top gun. The only difference looks wise
is the paint job. Odviously if Baja..or any other brand
for that matter... were selling boats for a 1/2 mil and
up, they could warrant an 80k paint job. But since
they are in a certain price bracket they have to have
a handful of paint schemes. The reason you see more
Baja's and Fountains is plain & simple. PRICE! If everyone
had a 500k to spend on a boat...all you would see would
be Cigarettes & O'L's ! Hell,one of the best boats I owned
was a 28 Checkmate. Solid as a Rock,still runnin our lake,
17 years old,and still looks beautiful.

Hit the nail on the head. If I was making my annual salary times 1000 then my first performance boat wouldn't have been my 245. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleeper_dave (Post 2163647)

Everything is a good boat for the price, if the price is right. We almost universally knock Bayliners, but they're a good boat for the price.

Back in the early 90's, I saw a lot more new Baja's than new Fountains.

Seems nowadays, I see a lot more early 90's Fountains than I do Baja's. The last 15 year old Baja I tied up to looked like a 15 year old boat (right down to the huge stress cracks in the sides). The guy asked me how old my 1991 Fountain was by saying "How old is that boat, 2-3 years old?"

I must agree, though, that he was having as much fun as I was, and I had all the same problems with my Mercruiser motor that he did with his.

I have one thats 17 years old and IMHO it still looks pretty decent. You won't find one stress crack on her either.

As far as purchasing a "real" performance boat goes, wellI don't have the luxury of being able to spend a few hundred grand on one....and most the places I boat people still view mine as a performance boat anyway...and so do I. Perception I suppose.

Outerlimits/Cigerette/Skater, those are like lamborghinis, porshes, and Ferraris
A baja is just like a camaro or mustang, cool, but everyones got one

I was out in the Narrows and Atlantic yesterday afternoon with my 98 33 Outlaw w/o much issue, as has been posted above. People can rip on them but as long as the owners are having fun, who cares. Heck I have no problem running with Seadoo Jet boats, Bayliners, or whatever good peopler are driving out there. Why all the hate toward Bajas I don't know. Oh well!

-mike

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Sunkin (Post 2164154)

Hot boat is no different than any other publisher. They have ad pages to sell. They aren't going to get a new advertiser into the book by telling the cold, hard truth about their product. You're also not going to keep big-page-volume advertisers like Reggie in your book by showing photos of hull/deck separations and sinking hulls. It isn't just the boat biz- this is universal everywhere in the publishing business. Unless you're 100% reader-supported, like Consumer Reports

Maybe Havasu isn't the best place to test OFFSHORE boats. Everything works pretty well on a pond. Your opinion might be different if you were to see a motor mount torn out of a stringer off of a 6' roller.

There's Bayliners and then there's Apaches. In between is an enormous gulf of difference in materials and construction quality. Of the boats you named, there are certainly differences, although not as dramatic as the one's I used in my example. Because you aren't identifying them, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Maybe you're either not looking very hard or you lack the long-term experience to know what to look for. Maybe you were a little star-struck too.

New boats, hand-prepped for a magazine, test driven on a small lake does not make for the best real-world examination of what you're going to be living with a few years down the road.

No, they're not all "great" boats. They're "OK" boats. That would be like comparing a Kia, a Chevy, an Audi and a Porsche. They're not all "great" cars. Not everyone can tell you why, though.

I've owner one of just about everything, from old wooden Lymans, a Bayliner or two, a couple Bajas, 3 Cigs, 2 Velocities and 2 Apaches- and a bunch more. Every one of them was lots of fun- much better than watching from shore. Some were constructed exceptionally well and some weren't. If you come on a site like this and say "my XYZ is a great boat- as good as anything else made" you have to expect to get some feedback from more than a couple of folks.

The tests we were doing were lake boats so....we tested on a lake. Makes sense, yes? When they do test off shore boats they test them in the ocean (usually).

And yes, they were all great boats, again LAKE boats. Looks like you've owned a bunch of boats but have you ever driven a big Eliminater, or a DCB or Hallet, or a Conquest? Do you have any experience with these boats or are you just going by what you've read here and there or by the fact that they are lake boats so they can't be as good as a Cig or Fountain.

And yes, I'm not going to bash a magazine that treated me well. But I'd really like to see specific examples of when they have reported something that wasn't true or deliberatly ommitted something that should have been reported.

As far as experience, I'm 51 years old and have been boating since I was a teenager. I've also owned a Cigarette and have driven, riden in and ran with many others as well as Fountains, Hustlers, Nortechs, Sakters, MTI's, etc. I also own a custom hot rod shop in vegas so I know my way around motors, fabrication, wiring, painting, etc and I can tell the difference between junk, so so and high quality.

Again, if you think those lake boats aren't "great" you might want to tell that to guys Nick Baron or Bob Leach. Oh and guys like Paul Pfaff who supplies engines to these guys. Oh, and which one of these would be the Kia? WTF? Yeah, the're just "okay" boats! :eek:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dd24skater (Post 2164079)

couldn't you say the same thing about Formula?

How can you possibly bash a Formula? Are they the fastest, no... there's always something faster. They do make a quality product.