2019 Palm Beach GT50 review

That "GT" in the Palm Beach GT50 stands for "Grand Tourer", and follows the car-world tradition of being a vehicle created for traversing great distances at great speeds in grand comfort.

A Porsche 911 might be quick, but it is nowhere near as plushly decadent as this latest Palm Beach creation. No, the Palm Beach GT50 is more like an Aston Martin, or even one of the bigger, ballsier Ferraris.

It is, as Palm Beach’s creative director Joel Butler explains to us, a boat that’s “absolutely focused on performance”, and one that’s capable of slipping across the open sea at 35 knots, for hours on end.

It is also, as you would expect from a company helmed by that ultimate perfectionist and legendary yachtsman Mark Richards (yes, the same one of Wild Oats fame), a thing of beauty and exquisite quality.

We spent a day with one on the waters around the Gold Coast, and found ourselves just slightly overwhelmed by its effortless abilities.

It takes just a glance at the Palm Beach GT50 from a distance to know that it’s going to be expensive, and it is.

The starting price is $US1,550,000. With so many options for personalisation – our test boat had a carbon-fibre wash basin, for example – the amount you can spend is, as you might imagine, almost endless.

You’ll surely want the Smeralda Italian deck chairs for $1200 (that gets you two), the electric barbecue for $1995, and the IPS Dynamic Positioning is a nice inclusion at $15,800. And who could have a GT50 without getting the painted hull sides – they do look fabulous after all – at $50,000.

So yes, this is an expensive boat, but it certainly looks and feels it, and when you consider how much invisible carbon-fibre there is surrounding you, it’s no wonder it costs so much.

The people who buy this boat are often existing customers of the company’s sister brand, Grand Banks (born and bred in Sydney, Australia by Richards no less, and still based here, with another building yard in Malaysia for good measure), and have a bigger boat for days when they just want to cruise.

The GT50, then, is Palm Beach's fun ship, their speed boat with style, and the company has had plenty of interest from current customers, and from buyers in New Zealand, the US and Europe.

There are plenty of people, then, who can see the value. Or at least don’t worry about the cost.

There’s something decadently cool and purposefully poised about the way the Palm Beach GT50 sits on the water at rest.

It looks like a cross between the most imaginative paper aeroplane a primary school student could design, a shrunken superyacht and a ski boat.

It measures a full 55 feet in length, with a highly usable 4.0-foot, teak-covered swim platform at the rear, and has a beam of 14.8 feet, which means it’s surprisingly spacious inside.

There’s also a proper walkway all around the edge of the boat, for safety and convenience.

Butler gets almost carried away when talking about the “softening of the lines” and its “voluptuous curves”.

“We were thinking supercars, sports cars, the Porsche 911, that kind of vibe, so that was in our mind when designing the look,” he says with undisguised pride.

Step onboard and the rear deck is well set up for entertaining, with settees covered in diamond-patterned, quilted ultra-leather (you can even choose the colour of the stitching you want, because all of the fittings, from furniture to steelwork, are made in house, to suit your style).

Speaking of style, our test boat featured a carbon-fibre surround for the dash, and that sink in the head we mentioned, but someone made the strange decision of painting the beautiful timber tiller in a finish that makes it look, and feel, like plastic.

There’s no accounting for taste.

What you notice most when sitting in the command position is how great the vision is around you.

The windscreen is one enormous piece of glass, and at the touch of a button you can open the sunroof, and the powered side and rear windows, which are also very large, and suddenly it feels like you’re out in the open.

The saloon is quite comfortable, but not vast, and the main cabin is hugely plush, with carpet thick piled enough to lose sight of your feet. This seems a slightly weighty option for a boat that’s so focused on being lightweight.

So much so that the second cabin, which feels like a Tokyo capsule hotel, has a bed made out of carefully chosen layers of foam and latex, so that it can be comfortable and yet just a few inches thick, to save weight.

The big gains come from the Palm Beach GT50’s construction, which features an E-Glass and Corcell core in a sandwich construction for the hull.

The deck and everything above it is made of infused carbon-fibre that keeps weight down and structural rigidity up.

Sure enough, there’s not a creak to be heard or a flex to be felt on this GT50.

Throw on two Volvo IPS 800s (you can spec different inboard engines if you prefer), and your power-to-weight ratio looks pretty handy

As plush as it all looks, according to Butler the GT50 is meant to be a low-maintenance affair.

“Everything comes with covers so you can just cover it up and split at the end of your day out,” he says.

“This model is designed for minimal maintenance and maximum fun; just step on board, fire up your engines, and see you later, you’re ready to rock.

“At the end of the day, hose it down and you’re off. We want to maximise the amount of time you can be out on the water having fun, rather than sitting on the dock, checking levels and tweaking things.”

Low maintenance, high quality and stratospheric levels of fun? Sounds like a winning equation.

It’s a wonderful mix of potency and poise, this Palm Beach GT50.

Give it the beans from a floating start and it will genuinely try to blow your hair off, but the even more impressive thing is that it can just sit at speeds like 30 or 35 knots and cruise along with ease. And stay remarkably flat while doing so.

The Palm Beach GT50 feels lithe and light on its feet and responds instantly to your tiller inputs. It is, in short, a hugely amusing and entertaining thing to drive.

At rest, it has the stability of a much larger boat, despite the version we tried not having a stabiliser fitted (you can have one if you want, of course, but again it would go against the lightweight ethos).

I was surprised to learn that even people with this much money to spend are interested in fuel savings, and thus fuel economy is a big focus for Palm Beach.

“Every boat in the range has a serious focus on efficiency, you get the benefit at the pump and in range,” Butler explains.

“They’re super slippery and they’re just not a loaded hull, the GT50 is a semi-displacement hull, so it’s very fine in the forefront, with nice soft shoulders, and a lot of curvature from the sexy tumblehome that comes through, from the aft section, so it’s really flat in the transom, which means it sits beautifully flat as well.”

It’s difficult to argue with Butler here because the GT50 really does sit beautifully flat, and under acceleration, it tends to keep its nose down for longer than you might expect before getting up on the plane at higher speeds.

We couldn’t get enough of driving this Palm Beach, frankly, but even when we were just lounging around, it was a mighty fine place to be.

If you’re looking for the ultimate grand tourer in boat form, the Palm Beach GT50 would be hard to go past.

The effortless nature of the way it drives, combined with the low-maintenance approach makes it seem extremely appealing, a rich man's toy for the rich man who’s very busy and doesn’t have a lot of time for playing around on his boat.

Frankly, the damn thing looks so good, both from onboard or the shoreline, that you’d just pay whatever it cost to have one, if you could.

Personally, I’d have one of these over the bigger, more luxurious boats that money can buy, because the sense of speed and style are purely intoxicating.

Specifications
Model: Palm Beach GT50
Length overall: 16.4 m
Beam: 4.49m
Draft: 0.93m (IPS)
Displacement: 13,000kg
Engines: Twin Volvo IPS 800 (standard)

Priced from: $US1,550,000 including twin Volvo Penta IPS800 pod drives; 18,000BTU air conditioner; carpeted floors in accommodation, Zipwake trim tabs; 40L hot water heater; 2000W inverter; teak flooring in salon; leather upholstery; convection microwave oven; fridge; Fusion audio system; porcelain heads; LED lighting; two fire extinguishers; and flares, life ring and eight life jackets

Price as tested: $US1,800,000 including painted hull sides; stainless steel bow rail; and Garmin radar, chartplotter and autopilot with engine room camera and 7.0-inch Volvo Penta display

Supplied by: Grand Banks Australia