I recently took a trip down back to Southern California to visit several industry related shops, and boat builders. One of the stops made a lasting impression on me, and that was Cobra Boats! It has been years since I have taken a hard look at what Cobra is doing (pre-recession LA Boatshow was probably the last time), if we offered a "Most Improved Manufacturer" award at RDP, they would hands down win it.

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Upon arriving we walked through the door and stumbled right onto this Cobra 260. From the outside it looks like a traditional Cobra. It's got fresh graphics, and is a respectable boat by all means.

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They had removed the transom hardware on this boat. I'm assuming it was out to be coated.

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The dash is laid out with Custom face plated Livorsi gauges.

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What caught my attention in this boat though was the attention to detail in the interior. It's pretty rare in the boating world that you will see this much stitching and three dimensional work in an interior. Every other small black panel was raised, and the ones in between were the height of the rest of the interior. You can really see it in the next pic.

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This isn't your standard interior by any means.

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Backs of the open bow, and walk through.

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Immediately behind the 260, was this absolutely unreal 270 Python. I'm going to dive right into it, other than maybe having a boat "custom" rigged by a specialty shop where some of the parts are fabricated to your tastes or to the boat itself, this is about as good as it gets.

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Once again, I was mind blown on the interior work. This is as nice is not nicer than anything I have seen from the West Coast in the past. Simply beautiful. You will notice that this is also custom to this boat! They are doing each boat individually with the owners, something that isn't often seen anymore in this industry.

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Again just unbelievable work.

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The Python itself is full of little features that I really enjoyed like this cooler storage under the passenger and drivers seat. It would take way too long to get into them all, and this isn't a boat review, but rather a shop tour so we are going to keep it going in that direction.

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Note the drive trim indicator coming out of the dash. Commonly referred to as "Pecker Gauges" for obvious reasons.

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Breakers right at the drivers seat.
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Teague 1050

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Everything about this boat was first class. From the parts they used, to how they rigged them.

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In my search to take you guys on a shop tour, I might have gotten a little bit side tracked with some of the details of the boats in the show room. In my defense I believe if you were walking the building with me, the same thing would happen to you in person! It's impossible to walk by something of this caliber without stopping to "smell the roses."

To the left of the 270 is the offices for Cobra. If you walk through the door the odds are high you will be greeted by Hernando. Hernando is the general manager for Cobra, and oversees the day to day operations of the company.

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The area where a receptionist would traditionally sit. Because I'm running short on Pictures I'm not going to post Jeff's office behind this, or the third office even further, but they are of equal size and styling to Hernando's. Sliding glass doors, black leather couches, and desks.

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To the right of these offices is currently a couple of consignment boats. Cobra was smart during the recession with the understanding that very few people were building new boats. They elected to purchase boats at auction and fix them (they have the perfect facility and ability for it) and then resell them. They were also doing repairs, service, and finally consignments.

Behind the offices there is a really decent size retail store. They have a surprising amount of inventory and again because of my limited room with photo's I can only add a few of the store here.

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In that store there is everything you would need to service your boat, trailer, replace certain parts if you owned a Cobra. It was like a miniature version of West Marine. Of course they also had a huge inventory of Cobra SWAG for sale! T shirts, hats, hitch covers, and even bearing buddy covers with the Cobra emblem. They put a ton of effort into branding over the years.

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We exited the store to the right and found ourselves in the rigging department of Cobra. It's a large space with ample room to rig six or seven boats at a time if needed. This blue Python had recently sold and was in process of being put together.

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Again because I can only post 25 photos in an article I have to keep this short, but once again we find ourselves looking at first rate interior work.

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Outside of the rigging shop there is a large covered bay that is setup for service work. What you can see in the pics is enough room to have about three boats side by side at a time for service. The covered area continues on further where even more boats could be serviced if necessary. Hernando was quick to point out that all boats that come in for service and repair are always stored indoors after the work is performed.

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Unfortunately we arrived late in the day and the glass shop and interior shop was already locked up for the day. It is another really good sized building, and I would have liked to have seen their manufacturing facility but it wasn't in the cards on this day.

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The facility itself is setup perfectly to not only be a boat shop, but a dealership as well. The retail section in the middle of it is just the kicker. If you find yourself in Montclair I'd highly recommend stopping by. The boats they are building are first rate, and the tour is definitely worth the price of admission.

To see a more in depth tour with more pictures, and to see what the members are saying about Cobra boats please visit our forums and check out the thread!

Cobra Boats Shop Tour Thread

To learn more about Cobra Boats visit their website at

http://www.cobraperformanceboats.com/

Give Hernando a call to setup your own tour. I think you'll be as impressed as I was!

Photos / Words : RiverDave