JMHO. These four letters tend to get me in trouble.
Grandpa was a metaphor, and not meant to insult. If someone took that the wrong way, my apologies. Look at it this way, grandpa as in your “This Is Not Your Grandfathers Oldsmobile”, if anyone remembers that GM sales campaign from the 90’s.
Oh god, here I go...
The A series is definitely your grandfathers Oldsmobile.
The complicated hull design, and the excessive labor going into building it makes it obsolete. Look at it as obsolete in the way that a Chris Craft is obsolete. Nice classic lines, unmistakable from a distance, but priced out of market because of the build complications and older target buyers, and definitely not a mainstream selling design anymore. How many classic Chris Crafts are sold today? If there aren’t semi loads of them leaving the factory every single day, well, thats how companies shutter up. I’m still surprised Cobalt designed and then actually built the A36.
Trends change, markets change. Buyers change.
It’s the job of any company director or CEO to look into their crystal ball and chart the course of their company for the next decade, and do all of that correctly, and do that “today”.
Boat manufacturers are starting to feel a new issue, the squeeze from the current administrations tariff policies that now require a leaner, meaner, more focused operation.
https://wtop.com/national/2018/08/ameri ... p-tariffs/
Overseas sales are now close to impossible.
We’ve got to think more changes will be coming over the next year. I still think the A40 and the A36 days are numbered.