Four Winns

Four Winns has outlived every company that has owned it, and it is about to do it again. OMC held the brand until it filed for bankruptcy in December 2000, and Genmar bought Four Winns out of the wreckage in early 2001. Genmar itself ceased to exist on 20 January 2010 in its own bankruptcy, and Platinum Equity took essentially all of its assets for $70 million, building Rec Boat Holdings around the plant at Cadillac, Michigan. In June 2014 Groupe Beneteau — the French sailboat group — bought that business: about $150 million of revenue, 475 people, more than two hundred dealers. And on 11 June 2026 Beneteau's supervisory board resolved to end production at Cadillac in the third quarter of this year and to sell Four Winns along with Glastron and Scarab Jet, citing a structural decline in the bowrider and jet-boat segments and roughly €30 million of cumulative operating losses across the American brands over the 2024 and 2025 financial years. Two hundred and thirty-two people; a search for a buyer under way. That is four owners and four exits, and a hull built under any of them is still a hull built at Cadillac by the same workforce.

The French decade left a mark on the product that is worth understanding, because it is the most ambitious thing this yard has ever done and it is also part of why it is for sale. Four Winns spent those years electrifying: the H2e is a series-production electric bowrider on a Vision Marine 180e — 180 hp continuous, 230 at peak — with 83 kWh of battery under it. Boating's test liked what electric torque did to the boat, reporting demonstrable ride and handling benefits in planing and turning and very low noise, and then said the rest out loud. The price premium against the same boat with a gas outboard was eye-watering at $189,600; it will not do the distance or the time of the petrol H2 OB, managing about an hour and twenty minutes at 21 mph with six aboard; and it charges overnight at 120 volts. So the yard that proved a family bowrider could be electric is being sold because the family bowrider stopped selling.

Underneath the badge changes, one thing has been continuous: the Stable-Vee hull drawn by Tom Wenstadt, a variable deadrise finishing at twenty-one degrees at the transom, with the width from keel to chine carried further forward than usual so the boat sits flatter at rest and gets up early. Boating measured 3.8 seconds to plane on the H2 outboard and gave the hull the credit. The H210 SS is that idea in the size most families actually buy:

Scout watches 66 live Four Winns askings, averaging $78,908, and publishes 2 across 2 of the yard's models, 2008–2013, asking $20,500 to $49,950. Whatever the count, the years are the part to read closely here, because a brand sold this often keeps its hulls and loses its paperwork: the moulding, the deck and the ride belong to Cadillac, while the warranty, the parts counter and the dealer who knows the boat belong to whichever company owned the name that season.

The cruisers are where that split is sharpest, and the Powerboat Guide's entry on the 278 Vista and the V285 that replaced it manages to make the case for and against in the same paragraph. There is a lot to like from the standpoint of design and engineering, it says, and Four Winns builds a quality product that shows throughout the boat — a smooth-riding twenty-seven footer, legally trailerable at an eight-foot-six beam, with seductive styling and deluxe accommodation. Then it names the flaw without softening it: the interior is near-claustrophobic. Both halves are true of the same boat, and which one governs is a question about you rather than about the builder, because nobody can tell you from a photograph whether you will mind a small cabin:

Owners draw a different line through the range, and theirs is a year rather than a size. On the iboats forum the dividing question is what the deck is made of: boats with carpet-covered plywood are reported to make it to about ten or twelve seasons before rot starts, with one owner replacing deck and stringers at seventeen years, while the change to a full fibreglass liner from 1996 earns the verdict that they are then as good as any other production boat. Rot begins anywhere moisture can collect, which on a bowrider means every fitting anyone ever screwed through the sole. It is the single most valuable thing to know about a used Four Winns and it costs nothing to check — and it is worth noting that the same posters complain there is comparatively little written about these boats, which is itself a reason a buyer ends up in the restoration threads rather than the reviews.

The awkward part is the timing. Anyone buying a Four Winns this season is buying from a brand whose factory is closing this quarter and whose name is being shopped to a buyer nobody can yet name, and the honest position is that nobody knows what parts, warranty administration and dealer support will look like eighteen months from now. That is not a reason to avoid the hull, which was built before any of this and does not care. It is a reason to prefer a boat whose consumables and drivetrain are already sorted, to price a spares problem into anything unusual, and to be sceptical of a seller who tells you the transition will be seamless — this brand has been through four of them and none of them was. If that is a risk you would rather not carry, the neighbours at the same money are on the cabin cruisers under $50k and the bowriders under $50k. If it is not, this is the moment the market discounts a decently built boat for something the boat did not do.