Conversations with Classic Boats

Conversations with Classic Boats is a podcast about classic boat designs and the stories behind them. Hosted by Tom Darling, this episode reviews how the good life embraced physical pleasure and self-indulgence.

Did you ever wonder what that glamorous gleaming mahogany-sided boat was that Sean Connery was driving in the James Bond movies? Most likely, this was a Riva Aquarama, the Italian luxury runabout built for the past 60+ years in Sarnico, Italy.

While Hacker and Chris-Craft were the native speedboat designs for USA from the 19th century, what the Boston Whaler was to the American in the 1950s and 6Os, the Aquarama was to the fashionable haunts of the Cote D’Azur of the 1960s.

Riva was the choice of film stars, race car drivers, and fashion moguls. Even today, bold faced names like Giorgio Armani treasure their Aquaramas.

A family-run enterprise since the 1840s, Riva is now part of the Italian luxury yacht company, the Feretti Group. This episode has the vintage photographs with celebrities that commemorate “La Dolce Vita”, a time of the 1960s epitomized in the Fellini movie of the same name. “Ciao, Riva”