We’ve all heard the adage about boats being holes in the water into which owners throw money. And while no boat could truly be described as a copper-bottomed investment, the wooden models made by the celebrated Italian builder Riva from the 1960s to the 1990s have a reputation for being more of a watertight investment than most.
The Riva name was first linked to boat building in 1842, when 20-year-old Pietro Riva set up a peripatetic repair business along the shores of Lake Iseo in northern Italy. He progressed from fixing fishing boats to building sailing yachts, skills that were passed down through three generations. It was his great-grandson who had the vision to create the range of elegant wooden-hulled speedboats that have become so associated with the nameplate.
Alexandre Latscha’s Riva Ariston Softly II © Alexandre Latscha
Brigitte Bardot was given a Super Florida by Roger Vadim
The vintage mahogany-hulled boats (the last of which was built in 1996) quickly gained a certain cultural cachet. Beloved by movie makers, they appear in Ocean’s Twelve, Men in Black and Casino Royale and have been driven by everyone from champagne scion Guy Taittinger and film producer Carlo Ponti to industrial heir Gunter Sachs. Brigitte Bardot was given a Super Florida by her then-husband Roger Vadim. The boat, with its famed large, sunken sun deck, became a co-star in paparazzi pictures shot near her home in St Tropez.
