Motorboat & Yachting Magazine November 2018 Edizione posteriore

FAIRLINE TARGA 43 OPEN
Has the price of new boats got a bit silly of late? It’s a debate that has been
raging on the mby.com forum for a while now and I’m still not sure what the
answer is. Take one of the boats in this issue. When we tested the Fairline Targa 44 in 2007 the starting price was £381,875 inc VAT. The new Fairline Targa 43 test starts at £608,280. On the face of it that’s a pretty big leap in 11 years but the world has changed a lot since then, as have customer expectations. For starters, the new Targa 43 is actually a much bigger boat than the old 44 – it’s 19in longer, 11in wider and a whopping 3ft 10in taller. That’s a lot of extra raw materials, especially when you’re buying most of them in euros at a rate of 1.10 to the pound, compared with 1.36 back in 2007. The UK VAT rate has also risen from 17.5% to 20% in that time.