The Vintage Boat Revival: Why Classic Yachts Are the New Status Symbol
Published on Apr 10, 2025 at 8:48 AM | By Alessandro Renesis
Everything is cyclical.
Fashion is cyclical, and trends are cyclical, even when it comes to luxury.
For a very long time, the world’s wealthiest were mostly only looking for ultra-modern, ultra-luxurious vessels.
The bigger the better, and they wanted tenders and helipads and spas on board and cinemas.
Some are still looking for those things, but a growing number of high-net-worth people are now turning to old-school boats and classic yachts.
There are several reasons behind this change, one of them being to do with people’s idea of the 1950s and 1960s.
Some believe that luxury travel peaked between the 1960s and 1990s, the Concorde era, if we wanted to summarize it in an easily understandable bracket.
Back then, it felt like you could take your time, and it felt like you didn’t have to worry about taking pictures for ‘the ‘gram’.
The instagram part is 100 percent true because it didn’t exist back then.
And as for the world going at a slower pace back then when compared now, well, that may just be a perception, but perception can sometimes be as important as reality itself.
So that’s why people miss the Concorde era, which was also the Riva era.
About Riva
Riva was founded in a small town not far from Milan in 1842 as a small-batch manufacturer of luxury vessels.
The shipyard is still located in the same town and still active.
And even though it now also builds superyachts, it’s still mostly associated with the iconic wooden boats, known as runabouts, that we remember from the 1950s and 1960s.
It doesn’t really take a lot of imagination to understand why.
All those Pulitzer-worthy pictures of celebrities such as Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable and Alain Delon taken in the Mediterranean almost always featured Riva boats.
Riva hit the jackpot in 1962 when the company introduced the Aquarama, which is by far the brand’s most iconic design.
The Aquarama is what is known as a runabout, a small motorboat designed for lakes and seas rather than oceans.
Around 8 meters in length, the Aquarama has often been praised as the ‘Ferrari of the boat world’, and with good reason.
The boat also appeared in a long list of movies, including the 1995 James Bond GoldenEye, piloted by Xenia Onatopp, one of the movie’s antagonists.
In fact, here’s the (incomplete) list of celebrities who’ve owned one: Anita Ekberg, Brigitte Bardot, Richard Burton, Sophia Loren, King Hussein of Jordan, Sha of Persia Reza Pahlavi, Ferruccio Lamborghini, George Clooney and Aristotele Onassis.
A 1-of-1 Riva Aquarama
The Riva Aquarama you see in the picture above is a one-off model designed by artist Xavier Casalta.
This example, a 1969 model, was fully restored by Bellini Nautica and then detailed by Casalta himself.
It features mahogany decking for the exterior and ‘Summer’ upholstery by Casalta for the interior.
This Riva is powered by a pair of Riva Crusader 220-hp V8s, and the boat is nearly new, considering its 50+ years of age.
She only shows 150 hours on the engines at the time of cataloging.
