CLASSIC RIVA SUPER TRITONE IN LONDON
The UK’s classic Riva specialist, Ventura, will be exhibiting a customised vintage Riva at this year’s Masterpiece Art & Design Fair, which takes place in the grounds of London’s Chelsea Hospital from 28 June – 4 July.
The boat on show is a 1961 Super Tritone, uniquely customised by the Riva yard in Italy.
The golden age of the wooden Riva began in the late 1940s, and continued until almost the end of the 20th century. The last wooden Riva was completed in 1996.
The Tritone was a pivotal design for Riva, and only their second venture into the fledgling leisure speedboat market of the 1950s. The design marked the transition from the 2-seater, single-engine runabouts that typified the early 20th century, to a much more spacious and useful family dayboat, with more seats, a small cabin and twin engines. This was the coming of age of the wooden speedboat and the beginning of the golden era of La Dolce Vita on The Riviera.
The Tritone entered production in 1950 and was an immediate success. It played a lead role in establishing Riva as the world leader in wooden speedboats, and laid the foundation for the company’s meteoric rise to legendary status over the next half century. It remained in production, through various modifications and improvements, until 1966. In all, some 257 Tritones were built.
The Tritone also paved the way for what became Riva’s most successful model of all time, the Aquarama. Their hulls were very alike, and of similar size at just over 8m. The Tritone had a long, strip-planked aft deck over the engines, which provided the ideal space for a sunbed. The big change in the Aquarama was that this area over the engines was recessed, creating a much more secure sunbed, a development facilitated by the advent of lower-profile V8 engines.
The Super Tritone, which was in production from 1960 to 1963, was slightly longer at 8.25m – the same length as the Aquarama that followed, and also had more powerful engines. She was one of the fastest boats Riva ever built, with a top speed of over 50mph.
Super Tritone 168 at Masterpiece 2018
The boat offered for sale at the Masterpiece fair is Super Tritone hull number 168. She was built in 1961 for the Italian Ice Cream machine manufacturing family Carpigani. A year after her launch, Riva introduced the Aquarama, and soon after that the owners of Tritone 168 decided to return her to the Riva yard to be upgraded with some of the key features of the Aquarama.
The modifications included the Aquarama’s divided walk-through forward seats, and the recessed aft sunbed, which also necessitated replacing the engines with the lower profile 220hp units from Crusader.
She recently completed a full restoration, which included new engines, gearboxes and electrics.
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