*Places like Lake Como in Italy and the French Riviera are the aquatic playgrounds of the impossibly rich and glamorous. Think Cary Grant taking Grace Kelly for a spin along the Cte D'Azur from Monaco to Cannes. Just as a Ferrari is requisite transportation on the land around these places, the Riva speedboat is its water-born counterpart.
Like Scuderia Ferrari, Cantieri Riva is an Italian marque-but with a much longer history, dating back to 1842. Pietro Riva, born in Sarnico, northwest Italy, started repairing storm-damaged boats that had come off nearby Lake Iseo. His business soon expanded into boat building, where crafts of high quality were produced. Ernesto, Pietro's son, took the helm in 1880 and he furthered the Riva reputation by keeping the high standards and adding innovations, like fitting internal combustion engines.
That wonderful tendency of the young, daring, and well-heeled to take their new toys racing applies to motorboats as much as anything else beautiful and fast. In 1921, Serafino Riva, son of Ernesto, was on board the first boat (with an outboard motor) to exceed the exciting speed of 15 mph. He raced his family's vessels throughout the 1930s and Serafino won many international events-great for reputations and marvelous for sales. Day-to-day business, however, couldn't keep him engaged. It was his son, Carlo (born in 1922), who turned the Riva speedboat into an H20 icon-but it wasn't all smooth sailing. During a period of archetypal father/son struggle in the early 1950s, the younger Riva had fresh, new ideas that Papa was reluctant to take on board. It's unclear whether apathy or strong persuasion caused the parent to change tack, but by 1954, Carlo's vision was being realized.
He became an Enzo-like figure, the duce of the docks, unfazed by his wealthy clients and not afraid to tell a king to pay in full before he got his boat. A confidence no doubt engendered by having Brigitte Bardot, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, Dino de Laurentiis, Peter Sellers, Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren, Prince Rainier of Monaco, King Hussein of Jordan, the Shah of Persia, and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden among his patrons (the latter still owns a Riva).
The classic Riva speedboat is unmistakable. It's elegant, perfectly proportioned, and features that hallmark mahogany decking at the bow. The Aquarama, produced from 1962 to 1996, is the most famous of Carlo's designs. Its mahogany hull is 34.5-feet long, there are separate front seats (as opposed to a bench arrangement), an open sunbathing area further astern, and a swim ladder mounted at the stern. Throughout its 796-unit production cycle, several versions of twin-engine setups were deployed, featuring inboard motors that ranged from 185 hp each to 350 hp (in the Aquarama Special). These engines were commonly sourced from Chrysler. With the exception of the too-expensive Ferrari 4.5-liter V12, no Italian engine at the time had sufficient muscle-even small boats need a lot of power to cut through water. Navigation was handled by what looked like a steering wheel from a '50s car, but these were made especially for the company. Riva started using German VDO instruments in 1964 (the same company that supplied VW for early GTI models). The artisan-crafted woodwork inspired a similar detail on the Rolls-Royce 100 EX convertible concept that went on to become the Phantom Drophead coupe.
Wooden boats, however, couldn't be made forever. With the advent of fiberglass, Riva was forced to move with the times. Carlo sold the company to another boat builder, Whittaker, in 1969. Since then, it has changed hands several times and is currently owned by Gruppo Ferretti. It still makes wonderful boats and yachts (the Aquariva attempts to bridge the gap between modernity and tradition, sporting a mahogany deck over a fiberglass/Kevlar hull and costs a trifling $740,000 or thereabouts), but they're not the same. Only 3,760 real Rivas were made under Carlo's aegis. A Lebanese collector had his Rivas destroyed during that country's Civil War in 1976. Surviving examples are now highly coveted, each one worth a boatload of cash.