A MODERN CLASSIC FOR A NEW ERA

In 1842, Pietro Riva opened a boatyard at Sarnico, on the shore of Italy’s Lago d’Iseo. A century later, his descendants were turning out the varnished mahogany runabouts that made the name a byword for glamour. When Riva introduced a 27-foot day boat in 2011, it was named for the lake. The message was plain: This one comes from the source.

The Iseo is the heir to the Aquarama, Carlo Riva’s 1962 icon, and it shows. There is the long, low profile, the wraparound windshield, and the aft sunpad that has defined the brand’s attitude for 60 years. The hull is fiberglass now, but the deck is dressed in mahogany, and the lines come from Officina Italiana Design working with Ferretti Group engineers.

The numbers are modest by yacht standards and generous by runabout standards. She is 27 feet long with an 8-foot-2-inch beam, draws about 3 feet, and carries six people. A single 300-horsepower Volvo Penta diesel drives her at 33 knots, with a top speed of 38 and a range of roughly 240 nautical miles.

But the Iseo’s best trick is that she travels. A custom trailer lets an owner tow her behind a car and launch her on a lake one weekend and the Mediterranean the next. She was also billed as the first boat in her class with an infotainment and GPS charting system built on Apple’s iPad. In 2011, that was news.

Then came a pair of heirs. In 2024, Riva introduced the El-Iseo, its first fully electric boat, on the same hull, with drive modes named for musical tempos: Adagio, Andante and Allegro. A year later, at the Boot Düsseldorf show in January 2025, the company unveiled the Iseo Super, a combustion-powered sibling with a reworked cockpit, a 9-inch Volvo Penta chartplotter and a hydraulic gearbox that quiets gear changes. Its 300-horsepower diesel cruises at 33 knots.