Kineo 46 Porsche Design Speed Boat (1986)

Kineo 46 Porsche Design Speed Boat

The Full Story

The Kineo name wasn’t decided yet, so, the project was started under dr. Horst Stross’s company “Payer-Lux”. The company was founded in 1946 by Eduard Payer, the father of dr. Stross’s wife, and it was a company that manufactured electric shavers. In 1976 dr. Stross, lawyer by education, became the owner of the company.

In 1985 Payer-Lux appointed Wilfried Weiland (see www.weilandboats.at), a power boat racing world champion, as the technical coordinator of the speed boat project and Porsche Design was approached for the design.

Although the initial plan was to create a 50-foot boat from the scratch, it was then decided to use some existing hull and to have Porsche Design make the look for the deck and the cockpit. First the hull from FB Marine Design in Italy was considered, but Weiland also made a trip to Florida to visit several other boatbuilders including Cigarette and Apache.

On June 3, 1985, a meeting took place at Porsche Design in Zell am See in Austria. The participants were Wilfried Weiland (owner of Weiland Boats, representor of Payer-Lux and Horst Stross), Ferdinand Alexander Porsche (owner and managing director of Porsche Design), Dirk Schmauser (deputy managing director of Porsche Design) and Jörg Tragatschnig (Porsche Design responsible designer of the boat project). It was agreed to fix in 1-2 weeks, which hull would be used and Weiland was ordered to make a 1:10 model of the lower hull so the deck designs could be experimented. It was agreed that the propulsion is made via 2 or 3 engines with stern drives (Z-drives).

It was decided to use the hull from FB Marine Design, a company of racing boat designer, builder and world champion Fabio Buzzi (see www.fbdesign.it). The plywood hull model of the 1985 Nitro 46′ was bought from FB Marine Design in Annone Brianza, Italy, and transported to Weiland Boote (Weiland Boats) workshop in Amstetten, Austria. The customs declaration from July 12, 1985, already stated the buyer as “Kineo”. With the hull chosen, Porsche Design could proceed with the design of the rest of the boat in August.

After Porsche made the design, Weiland built the wooden plug of the deck and cockpit. The wooden model for the hull was already there, so now fiberglass negative molds were made from both and from these negative molds the GRP (glass reinforced plastic or fiberglass) hull and deck were made.

The hydraulic swimplatform was made and installed aswell as the 3 MerCruiser engines with stern drives, hydraulic trim tabs, steering, exhaust, shift controls, battery charger etc. F.A. Porsche wanted the boat to be painted with metalic paint, but this was not possible in Austria, so it was decided to do it in Italy. But first the boat was taken to lake Como in Italy for testing with Fabio Buzzi, Horst Stross and F.A. Porsche.

It was realized that although the deck looked beautiful, it was dangerous to walk at. The shape of the deck was actually discussed in the meeting in June 1985, but then it was decided that the boat is not for low speed cruising, so the deck cannot be used much anyway. The second problem found in the testing was that the three racing engines made too much noise for a pleasure boat. After testing the boat was transported to a boat builder Maiora in Lucca in Italy for the final paintjob and for the outfitting with the deck seats, upholstery, dashboard and so on.

The project had already costed a huge amount of money for mr. Stross and the special paintjob was a very costly one, too. So, without the interior finished, the boat was still introduced to the public at the Genova boat show (Salone Nautico Internazionale Genua) from October 11 to 20, 1986.

As the Kineo 46 wasn’t fully finished, in the middle of 1987 Don Shead from UK was asked to carry on the Kineo 46 project with a view to bulding other size Kineos aswell. The KIneo 46 was taken to Southampton, UK and to Don Shead’s subcontractor Comer Ltd. in Botley. They didn’t like the GRP hull and it was decided to start from scratch with an aluminium Shead hull. The Porsche Design deck in GRP was still to be used.

Then suspicions took over on the concerns about different expansion rates of aluminium and fibreglass. Finally, for several reasons including financial, Horst Stross decided to cancel the Kineo 46 project. The 46-foot version was the largest Kineo made. Although it was built with series production in mind, only one was made.