Chris Craft Caper 16′
The Chris Craft Caper project was a concept we developed to fill the gap of a jet ski buyer vs a sport boat buyer. We meant the boat to be a jet boat before the small jet boat market actually started – a longer story about corporate games ~ OMC. The final direction is from one of my original sketches, with Jim Douglass developing the final lines – he was then VP of Design and had developed the earlier Stingers models. Everyone keeps saying there were 500 built, but I think the total number was 143. OMC (corporate level, not the CC execs) pulled the plug on the project when everyone else hit the market with jet boats at the same size.
A quick note on the ‘long story’ – OMC corporate sent word that there would be NO jet packages, the project would be outboard powered – an unusual heavy hand on our development team… We’d find out later that OMC was developing a jet package for another brand, with an exclusive deal… That said, outboards improved, and those little jet boats didn’t fair time as well as the Caper !
The Caper design direction was continued in the follow-up Quietrider 19′.
