Just watch out for problems like this

tmager,

Wow, what's the story behind that?

deck lifting to replace stringers?

Oh boy, amazing how a simple question can get so sidetracked. Surface Tension simply asked about Donzi's dealer network fluctuations and it get sidetracked to a bashing contest. To get back to the original question,Donzi is doing a general housecleaning of their dealer network, and it was long overdue. General speaking, the former dealers did not drop Donzi, Donzi dropped them and in some cases replaced them.Many of these dealers shouldn't have been Donzi dealers in the first place, but in our crazy, ever changing industry sometimes factories are too quick to sign dealers to try to get additional sales during market downturns. Donzi finally realized they needed to get rid of some dealers and sign some better ones. Pier 57 is a good example,the largest Fountain dealer now also sells Donzi, and Pier 57 is well respected.Donzi's largest dealer 4 years in a row was replaced because they were not giving a high enough level of customer service.Ranman, some of your points are valid but as far as Donzi being a hard sell,I disagree. They are only a hard sell to dealers that have no clue of how to sell a modern performance boat or our beloved Classic Donzis. Those are the dealers that are gone or going, and rightly so. The boat business is highly volatile and constantly changing. and as someone else posted, not limited to Donzi,it happens with every builder.I would love to see other views, just please, as Too Old said, let's stay with the original question.BTW, someone mentioned Donzi at one time being part or Mercury. They never were,it was OMC, and thankfully those days are long in the past

I tend to agree with Magicfloat. The new Donzi dealer in our area is now "Offshore-Performance". They also sell Cigarette and Sonic. Perhaps Donzi "chose" them because their name says it all - "Offshore-Performance". No ski boats, no Cruisers, no B.S, etc.

First a completely unrelated comment. When is Donzi going to have apparal for sale. I spoke to one dealer and they said they can not get any. Anyway as far as the dealer network goes I think Magicfloat got it right. I would add that Donzi has fixed their quality problems from the OMC days, created a line of performance boats (ZX and ZR) and now needs to modify the dealer network to more accurately fit with their new offerings.

I agree with Magicfloat, some dealers have no buisness selling Donzi's. Their is a dealer here in Ga. with a 01, 29 or 30 for sell and the damn sells person told me it had 502's in it when it had 500's. I'm not sure what sizes Donzi's build so I'm not sure what size this boat is. The boat has a fade paint sceme on it and is beautiful. You can buy it now for less than 150'000, seems like a good price to me, not sure. All I do know is you need to know what you are selling.

I thought a HP500 was a 502 block?

It is but a 502 usually refers to a 502MPI in Mercruiser speak and is a black motor. The 500s either HP500 carb or HP500EFI are the blue motors. Forged vs. cast etc.

Agreed on the dealer thing. When I went to buy my 16 Donzi in 1997, the local dealer sold fishboats and cruisers - and MAYBE some Donzis. I said I was interested in the 16 while pointing at a 22 Donzi they had on display and the guy handed me a Pro-Line brochure. I knew way more about my boat than the dealer did. (And it was my first performance boat.) No business selling them IMHO. Not long after I got mine, they stopped selling Donzis.