Grand Soleil 48P Aims to Appeal To Many Tastes

Can one new performance design appeal to many tastes? Toby Hodges explores the ideas and multifarious options offered on this new grand Soleil.

Without meaning to sound too shallow, looks make a big impression. Take the impact of this opening photograph. Who wouldn’t want to be in that helmsman’s position, heading offshore at the wheel of a sexy new Italian performance yacht?

Its sharp design attracts buyers aboard, while owners of these yachts want heads to turn wherever they go. But Grand Soleil knows all too well that the Italian fast cruiser market is brimming already and that looks alone won’t translate to sales. The 48 Performance has therefore been designed with plenty of smart thinking to back up the seductive styling.

It’s conceived as a versatile new model, which comes with a multitude of options to make it suitable for inshore and offshore racing and sporty cruising. Designer Marco Lostuzzi describes the 48P as a ‘transformer’ because of the flexibility of layouts and versions it boasts. There are three different keels offered, three sailplans, three cockpit layouts, three different build materials even, and the choice of four, six or eight winch packages. “It’s not easy to do all these solutions on a production yacht – that was the main challenge,” Lostuzzi reveals.

Is this today’s answer to the cruiser racer all-rounder then? We joined builders Cantiere del Pardo for its annual Grand Soleil Week in Portopiccolo to find out.

Reinvention for the times

When you think of Grand Soleils over the last 45 years, it’s the dependable cruiser-racers of the 1980s and 1990s that spring to mind, designs that hit the demand to be cruised hard and raced harder. But times have changed, along with how we spend our time afloat.