2009 Corsair Marine SPRINT 750 (CORSAIR) — Rockwall, Texas

A 2009 Corsair Sprint 750 at Rockwall, Texas, asking $39,500. The Sprint 750 is what Corsair Marine made in 2007 by stripping its 24-footer for sport — a hundred-odd pounds out of the hull, the cockpit stretched aft of a minimal cuddy, a rotating wing mast — and Sailing World named it Sportboat of the Year on arrival. The yard's signature is all here: 24.25 ft of hull carrying nearly 18 ft of beam that folds to a street-legal 8 ft 2 in, twenty knots on the water, sixty behind the car.

Two honesty notes. We hold no sister ship to benchmark against, so we cannot call $39,500 keen or dear for a 2009 Sprint. And the cuddy is a day-racer's — a V-berth, a small dinette, a portable head; the cockpit is where this boat spends its length.

What the shelf does place is the position. Among the trailerable trimarans we hold near its size, this is the newest hull under $45,000 — everything cheaper is a 1990s boat, everything newer starts at $56,900. Mid-fleet money, youngest boat in the band.

If the platform is right but it must sleep a crew in comfort, the next door is Corsair's own Dash 750 MkII — the same 24.25 ft folding platform with a proper cabin over it; a 2013 example asks $56,900:

Where the budget instinct leads, Quorning's Dragonfly 800 is the Danish take on the folding trimaran — a 1993 example at Hythe, England, asks $35,271:

And the plainest saving stays in Texas: a 1994 Corsair F-24, the line this Sprint descends from, lies on Lake Palestine at $21,900:

But if the drag-racer itself is the brief, this is the one to survey first: