Salthouse boats is releasing the Icon 54 Sedan, its new Eurasian-inspired luxury flagship.
The Salthouse Icon 54 Sedan is the first of the new Salthouse Icon range.
A new Icon Sedan range of luxury motorboats is the first big announcement from New Zealand’s Salthouse Boats (Salthouse Next Generation Boats to use the full title) after it moved manufacturing to Taiwan in November 2014.
Icon, you may remember, was the model name for a range of big luxury gamefishing flybridge cruisers from Formula Cruisers. The popular Icon bluewater fishers (10 are said to be cruising in Australian waters alone) were purchased by Dean Salthouse in 2013 and incorporated into his Salthouse Next Generation Boats fleet of single-level express cruisers.
The yard has subsequently expanded the Icon badge into a new series of Sedans, the Icon 54S (shown here) the first of the new luxury boats to come off the drawing board.
Dean said Kit Carlier and Donna Maree, formerly of Alloy Yachts, joined his team this year and have provided a new level of interior design and CAD computer modelling, particularly to the new Icon Sedans adding more curvier lines than the straight-edge looks of the current sister ships.
"We have conducted extensive research into the latest industry trends emerging worldwide and visited boat shows in Europe and Taiwan to ensure we’re offering the latest in leading-edge design," said Dean Salthouse.
time for our company," said Salthouse.
builder has allowed us to be fully dedicated to developing the new flagship Icon line that will offer the latest features – at a very competitive price. This is just the start of what is to come, with clients being able to customise layouts and variations to suit their requirements."
Salthouse says business has been "booming" this year, his customers excited about the possibilities of a new range. "It’s always been our intention to develop a larger range for our current owners to move up into," he said.
The first boat from the new Taiwan facility, a Corsair Euro 44, is currently under construction for a NZ owner, Dean Salthouse overseeing the build. He told Trade-a-Boat the second boat scheduled will be another CE 44, but this one specifically made as a demo boat for the Australian boat show circuit in 2016.
With a focus on Euro and Asian trends, Salthouse added that the three-model Icon enclosed flybridge cruiser range, from 54 to 60 feet, will go under the pen, each boat getting an all-new flybridge design that’s more squarer in shape for extra interior room.
Apart from economics, the shift to manufacturing offshore with Kaohsiung-based third-generation builder Queen Long Marine has also enabled the Kiwi builder to increase focus on designing and developing new products at greater speed.
Visit salthousecorsair.co.nz for more information.