First industrial steps
Foundations for industrialization
Other series production initiatives were launched in the 1920s and 1930s, with automotive industry leaders such as Dodge in the United States or Peugeot and Delage in France, but without the success they were hoping for.
While the Chris-Craft enjoyed unprecedented success, we must not forget its modest beginnings and the yard’s initial positioning focused on competitions. Its racing hulls are some of the first hydroplanes in history, getting close to the legendary barrier of 100 kilometers per hour from the time of the First World War.
Withdrawing from the sports sector in the early 1920s, the Chris Smith & Sons yard switches its focus to recreational boats, while remaining a family-run business working out of Algonac, Michigan. Christopher Smith, the patriarch and founder, with his four sons and employees Jay W., Bernard, Owen and Hamilton, are the first to see the potential of the recreational boating market on a large scale.
The boat revolution
With more than 200,000 units produced over nearly six decades, the rationalization of the manufacturing of Chris-Craft motorboats is a response, from the outset, to growing demand for mobility resulting from America’s economic prosperity after the 1918 Armistice. The temptation to buy non-essential goods is gradually supported by consumer credit.
In the United States, the automotive industry’s expansion is followed just a few years later by motorboats. With the initial needs met in terms of travel on four wheels, it then becomes tempting to offer a new form of leisure in a vast country with such widespread access to water. The Chris-Craft brand will be the first to successfully generate and satisfy this growing interest in freedom, the outdoors and speed.
While the racing boats at the time – and their few “tourism” versions – generally feature an aft cockpit, with their engine or engines at the front, the Smiths quickly see the insightful progress made by some isolated pioneers who install the controls in a cockpit located more to the front, with the engine in the rear. By replicating the features of a comfortable car on board, everything is in place to reassure future buyers who are used to proudly driving their cars.
The range that redefines boating
The first advert by Chris Smith & Sons, published in April 1922 in Motor Boat magazine, already announces the launch of a new range with a 24-foot runabout (7.20m) and two versions of a 26-foot model (7.80m). Shortly afterwards, its line-up rapidly incorporates a number of models with various options, new releases each year and marketing practices inherited from the automotive industry. This success story is also linked to its nationwide dealership network, the installment plans offered for payments and its exports.
From flourishment to decline
From 1946, the historic yard Algonac continues to grow and sets up a number of industrial “divisions”, working with outstanding designers, buying up existing yards in the Mid-West or establishing new sites in Florida, with a view to ultimately covering the whole range of different boats. The firm’s annual catalogue becomes a source of inspiration for all the small yards around the industrialized world, and particularly in Europe, ranging from modest outboard dinghies with plywood kits sold by post to luxurious motoryachts over 66 foot (20m) and utility or luxury runabouts from 16 to 26 foot (4.50 to 7.80m), built in clinker or classic planking, as well as cabin-cruisers and even some live-aboard sailing models in fiberglass.
This vast scale will lead to the firm’s downfall, swallowed up by a series of more or less coherent conglomerates, following the trend for ambitious diversifications in the 1970s. Chris-Craft will need to continue scaling back its offering until it virtually disappears from the radar, before emerging again, on a much more modest scale, in the early 2000s.