7 Reasons the Malibu Corvette Boat was a Great Idea that Ultimately Sunk

This Corvette boat owner has a full list of grievances about his water-going vessel, but loves it all the same.

The Corvette is an iconic model, a slice of American history, and this country’s original and best sports car. So harnessing all of this land-going magic into a Corvette boat sounds like a great idea, right? That’s precisely what a company called Malibu Boats attempted to do back in the mid-1990s, with a sleek, low-slung, fiberglass ski boat with Corvette-inspired styling and even Corvette engines tucked inside.

The Malibu Corvette boat made it through two iterations, produced between 1997-1998 and 1999-2000. Each mimicked the Corvette’s styling, and came packing either a 400 horsepower Callaway 383 cubic-inch stroker or LS7 from the C6 Z06 in later examples. They were undoubtedly fast, cool-looking, and even came with a bespoke matching trailer. So what could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, a lot. In this video from YouTuber VINwiki, a Malibu Corvette boat owner named Doug Tabbutt goes over all the reasons why his dream vessel turned out to be a total pain to own. Never meet your heroes, as they say. Here’s a list of his grievances, in no particular order of importance.

Horrendously Unreliable

“The problem was that the LT1 was known for being horrendously unreliable,” Tabbutt says. I even talked to one of the Callaway engineers and he said ‘yea, here was the design flaw.’ They keep popping motors, and boats are already a headache.”