Wheels and Water: Natural Bedfellows
Cars and boats have been joined at the hip since the dawn of the trailer hitch. But in recent years, carmakers—particularly those that build luxury and high performance vehicles—have dabbled in co-branding boats. They hope, I suppose, to capture (and capitalize upon) the organic kinship they perceive between those who love the water as much as they do the open road. These attempts have generated mixed commercial results, but have produced some seriously sexy watercraft. Projects created or branded by the likes of Ferrari, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Bugatti and others have pushed the limits of how we perceive the humble boat: more works of art than industrial products. As with concept cars at auto shows, such projects charge our emotional circuits and leave us feeling wired to the future. There…