2023. Gianni Agnelli, the man who revolutionized powerboats

Welcome to the special section “BAM 35 Years.” We are presenting “cult” articles from the Motor Boats archive, starting in 1990. A journey through time among stories unobtainable today, even in the great sea of the internet! A dive into the world of epic moments in motor boating. We begin with one of the stories we were most passionate about.

2023. Once upon a time

From Boats by Motor 2023, No. 30 April-May, pp. 70-79.

How the Lawyer, as a passionate owner, influenced the world of today’s powerboats, from the 10-meter open to the superyacht.

It is not always the yards or designers who set the trends. Or rather, sometimes it takes a spark to light the fuse of genius, some chance encounter that sets ideas in motion. If we think about how power boating has changed over the past 70 years from the small open to the large yacht, we can quite easily identify a figure who, in his own way, has influenced the way we sail on the sea today. Let’s start with an anecdote. Do you know who it was that provided the impetus for the birth of cult boats like the Wallytender, from which the chase boat or shadow boat phenomenon was born? No, we are not talking about Luca Bassani, but about the one who somehow inspired him: Gianni Agnelli (1921-2003).

“The first Wallytender was born from a master,” Luca Bassani, founder of Wally, told Boats a Motor in an interview. especially master of how they enjoyed boats in the Mediterranean. Lawyer Agnelli. He was seeing ahead. I remember that after he had also built himself a large motor boat, he had a smaller one made and then he got a large tender, about 6-7 meters that would allow him to move quickly and go from a sailboat to a motor boat with ease. The intuition to make Wallytenders came to me when Agnelli bought himself the Kookaburra tender, the 12-meter America’s Cup International Tonnage after a world championship in Porto Cervo. Seeing how he used this fast powerboat as a support between his boats, sail and power, I got the idea and from there I created the Wallytender. With these boats and with the help of some marketing, a new market was created that was not there before. We can say that the chaseboat as we know it today was born there.” .

In addition to the Avvocato’s strong passion for sailing, there was also plenty of room for large motor yachts and fast speedboats in his career as an owner. The first came in 1950 when, at the age of 29, Agnelli purchased Kum, an American speedboat. It was to be the first in a long series that saw some nautical milestones inside. In ’52 from the Baglietto shipyard in Varazze, Agnelli purchased the Gim, an open with a sporty hull, a sleek bow and a slide stern that had been built in 1940 for Fascist party secretary Ettore Muti, whose nickname was indeed “Gim with green eyes.” The Advocate had some work done to update it and put it back in the water with a new name: Covenant. It was in the late 1950s that a far more ambitious project was born: the GA 30. To do this, Agnelli brought architect Amedeo Albertini, author of his villa in the hills of Turin, to Baglietto to work on the interior of the GA 30. With him was, as a studio junior, Paolo Caliari, destined to become one of the most highly regarded contemporary yacht designers. From that experience, in fact, he stayed on to work in the shipyard alongside Pietro Baglietto bringing a breath of fresh air to the boating industry. Returning to the GA 30, this yacht was a turning point for performance: powered by three diesel engines this ninety-footer reached 30 knots, impressive numbers for the time. That the lawyer liked speed was no mystery, and it was again thanks to Baglietto that Agnelli met someone who knew a thing or two about performance at the limit: Renato “Sonny” Levi.

“It was at the first Genoa Boat Show,” says Sonny Levi in the book Dhows to Deltas of 1962 – that I was approached by Pietro Baglietto, an internationally renowned builder of luxury cabin cruisers, who asked me if I would be interested in designing a boat for one of his clients with the goal of winning the 1962 Cowes-Torquay regatta. At the time I did not know who the potential owner was, but I accepted the challenge with great enthusiasm. The boat that was born was theUltima Dea and the owner was the well-known industrialist Giovanni Agnelli, president of the Fiat car company.”

The offshore he had built, Ultima Dea, was the evolution of A’ Speranziella, a hull that in 1961 had taken part in the very first Cowes-Torquay, organized by the editor of the British Daily Mail newspaper.
“I took off like a rocket and stayed in the lead for long stretches,” recounted Levi following that first time of the Cowes Torquay. and from the planes took memorable photos that ended up on the pages of all the newspapers while the sea was at force five and seemed to be boiling. I finished seventh because of a breakdown and everyone remembered me and forgot about the winner.”

It was the performance realized by A “Speranziella in that premiere that impressed the Advocate, prompting him to want a similar one. For the record. A” Speranziella had to wait only a couple of years to win the competition, in 1963. The Advocate, on the other hand, took part in the 1962 edition at the helm of Ultima Dea built by Cantieri Naval-tecnica of Anzio and equipped with three Maserati gasoline engines, which together delivered 1,380 horsepower. Agnelli competed, then, only one other time, in the Italian Viareggio-Bastia-Viareggio. Both experiences were all in all negative, technical problems were the order of the day, and the Avvocato fell victim to them. This, however, did not deter him, and another bolide was born, Ultima Volta. Powered by a single (huge) 900-horsepower Carraro diesel, this 11-meter was employed in 1966 and the driver showed all his grit, leading the early part of the French Dauphine d’Or race. But he was forced to retire by yet another mechanical failure. Thus ended Agnelli’s offshore racing career. This boat bore a resemblance to a legendary design for vintage offshore enthusiasts, namely the Surfury, but more importantly, the team of carpenters from Anzio who built it soon gave birth to the Delta Shipyard. The partnership between Sonny Levi and this shipyard gave birth to cult boats such as theHidalgo, but above all it was from this shipyard that the “perfect boat” according to Gianni Agnelli came out , the G. Fifty. In 1967 the entrepreneur went to Levi’s with a clear idea in mind: he no longer wanted a pure offshore, but a design model that was more stylish and comfortable, but still very fast. The brief, as we would say today, was as essential as it was evocative: “I need a fast commuter,” said the Lawyer. comfortable in rough seas and making at least 50 knots. You know, I’d like to get to the finish line of an offshore race — before the winner.”

Built by Delta Shipyards at the end of knots she made 55, powered by four BPM Vulcan engines totaling 1,280 horsepower. Offshore experience, where designs were often taken to extremes, was harnessed to create a hull that could maintain a sustained top speed, glide smoothly, and be maneuverable even at low rpm. The arrangement of the engines (two central V-drives and two in a shaft line on the outside) and propellers was developed precisely to achieve a good compromise between top speed and ease of operation. For speed came models such as theAdagio, built by Delta of Fiumicino in 1981 and all the rage in the 1980s. Let us now turn to a completely different kind of yacht, similarly on the crest of the wave for several years: the explorer, the hull designed to sail in all kinds of seas and weather conditions, the most extreme example of long-range cruising. The progenitor of this category was theF100, one of Gianni Agnelli‘s most famous yachts, commissioned from CRN in 1983 and which became the progenitor of a genre of boats that today, with all its evolutions, is a protagonist in the large yacht market. At that time the nearly 33 meters of theF100 were mind-boggling numbers, and it was, no doubt, also thanks to this project that CRN established itself and had a major boost to what it has become today. Before that moment, in fact, nothing so large had ever left the site.

The lines traced those of a classic tugboat repurposed for yachting use while the initials “100” stood for the construction number of the CRN shipyard in Ancona. If his sailboats, the lawyer mainly used them for fun, I’F-100 was conceived, on the other hand, as a service craft, capable of providing maximum comfort and services in the “smallest” possible dimensions. In any case, a space on the deck had been designed for the helicopter, an inseparable companion to be able to combine work commitments and outings at sea. The yacht, then, as well as modern explorers had an immense range and no noise, but also only one engine.
“I have too much faith, by profession, in engines,” Gianni Agnelli said in an interview with Vincenzo Zaccagnino, ” to agree to have dual motorization on my yacht. L’F100 then had a tender. A fast speedboat, built in Australia, that was Agnelli’s last boat. His name was Volture and legend has it that it was this large support boat that inspired Bassani’s Wally Tender.

by Gregorio Ferrari

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