Chris-Craft remained the world’s best-known boat brand until the 1960s. The first serial boat builder started in 1923 with a single model called Runabout. This skilfully coined name was to generate an entire range defined by model’s length. By the late 1940s, the 17ft Deluxe Runabout was still one of the most popular models, an archetype summing up all Chris-Craft’s success story.
Founded a century ago, Chris-Craft dominated the motor boating market for a long time without any strong competition. The term Chris-Craft has long been used to refer to any wooden speedboat. It appeared for the first time in the nautical press in 1922 as an advertisement offering four different versions of their Runabout model, an unprecedented event in a field where each boat was generally the subject of a single order. This was the first statement of an innovative strategy in the
