FRAUSCHER DEMON 1414

If looks could kill, then Frauscher's super-cool weekender would slay everything in its wake. But is its performance as deadly? We take it for an early-morning spin in Palma to find out...

- Hugo Andreae

Every year at the Cannes boat show there is a small section of the marina next to the swinging pontoon across the entrance to the show that seems to be reserved purely for cool-looking boats. It’s here that you’ll find the Italian style icon Wally and German performance brand SAY Carbon Yachts, giving punters something to ogle while they wait for the swing bridge to close. But dominating one entire side of the unofficial Cool Dock is a fleet of boats from an altogether more unlikely source – land-locked Austria.

Frauscher has been building boats since 1927, initially small wooden sailing dinghies for the Austrian lakes before switching to elegant motor launches and runabouts in the 1950s and 1960s. Strict local emissions laws meant Frauscher was one of the early pioneers of electric motors too, an option it still offers on many of its smaller boats today, but in 2005 it launched an altogether different style of craft.

Abandoning the classic retro curves and traditional colour schemes of its predecessors, the 686 Lido adopted a much leaner, cleaner, more modern look with a near vertical bow and angular features that appealed to a younger, edgier audience. It set the tone for an entire new range of ultra cool modern day boats and weekenders culminating in this flagship model, the Demon 1414.

We shot a video tour of this at the Düsseldorf boat show in January and described it as “Europe’s coolest superboat”. More than 82,000 people watched the video, loving what they saw but asking whether its performance lived up to its looks. Stefan Frauscher, who along with his brother Michael now runs the yard, invited us to find out for ourselves.

TECHNO CHIC