2000 Trojan Boats 400 Express — Earleville, MD 21919

A 2000 Trojan 400 Express at Earleville, Maryland — the quiet upper Chesapeake — asking $69,800. The badge here outlived the yard: Trojan of Lancaster, Pennsylvania stopped building in 1992, and the name sailed on under Carver's ownership, which is how this boat exists. The 370/390/400 Express line (1993–2002) was the revived badge's one big idea, and it was assembled from serious parts: the hull engineered by Dana Ward, formerly Bertram's vice president of engineering, and the topsides drawn by Fulvio de Simoni, the Italian architect whose pen shaped the Pershing line. A 41-footer on a 13-foot-6 beam, with an express profile that has aged better than most of its Michigan-and-Wisconsin-built contemporaries.

Inside is the generic mid-cabin plan of the era done in cherrywood with 6 feet 4 inches of headroom: bow stateroom behind a bi-fold door with private head access, mid-cabin under the cockpit behind a curtain, a large galley, and on some boats a toilet hidden under a seat in the shower stall — space-saving with a sense of humor. The independent press never gave the 400 itself a full test; the surveyors and the Carver-Trojan owner community do the magazines' work on this model, and a buyer should know that going in. What the record does establish is the orphan-brand trade. Trojan was retired for good around 2002; there is no builder to call, and resale gravity is soft — which is precisely why a de Simoni-styled, Bertram-engineered forty-one-footer asks $69,800 instead of a hundred-something. The discount arrives when you buy and departs when you sell.

The express shelf around it prices the trade. The same year and size from a builder still answering its phone costs $14,805 less:

The class default, seven feet shorter and easiest of all to resell, costs $12,300 less:

And $5,200 more abandons the cockpit lifestyle entirely for a full-beam salon and two en-suite staterooms:

For the buyer who reads pedigree in hull lines rather than in brochures, the last Trojan is a genuinely interesting file:

Sources: PowerBoat Guide (Trojan 370-390-400 Express, 1993–2002); J.D. Power specifications for the 1999–2000 400 Express; Trojan brand history via trojanboats.net and Wikipedia.