Riva Super Florida #543 is one of the few Rivas that was delivered new to Sweden. The boat was ordered on 8 February 1961 by Director Helge Pehrsson in Stockholm through AB NK Kristensson who was agent for Cantieri Riva in Sweden at that time. The boat’s original engine was a Chrysler Sea-V of 177 hp and the order included a lot of extra equipment such as signal horn, sunroof, canopy over the rear cockpit, port canopy, extra manual pump, searchlight, compass, bathing ladder and water ski pole.
The boat was launched in the summer of 1961 without a name and it has remained so until today. Before the current owner took over the boat in 1997, two more owners managed to wear her with pleasure…
Like many people, Pelle’s interest in Riva boats arose already in childhood. His father sold boats and restored outboards in the 60s and owned a Sweet Sixteen, which possibly lived up to being a poor man’s Riva. In the home was a balsa model of a Riva, and there the first interest in the design language of Riva boats was awakened.
We fast forward the tape to 1995, when Pelle was tipped off by a former colleague about a Riva that was littering his lot and that he wanted to get rid of. A visit showed that it was not a Riva at all, but a Forslundare with Riva windscreen! More Riva parts were also in the owner’s garage. Even though it wasn’t a real Riva, the purchase still went thru with the ambition restore the boat.
The search for a real Riva did not end however. After contact with Hans Olof Örnfelt, who had owned a few Rivors, and Harald Parmell, who recently started the Swedish Riva Club, Pelle gained a little more knowledge about what he should pay attention to when it came to Rivas.
Two years after the purchase of the modified Forslundare, Pelle was told about a Riva in the Uppsala area that was for sale, but missing a window and some other fittings… Pelle took the window from the Forslundare with him when he was going to check out the Riva and it fit perfectly! The nose cone that he also got when he bought the Forslundare also had the same number (543) stamped on it as the Riva he was looking at… How these parts ended up on a Forslundare does not the story tell, but we have all heard of thefts at boat clubs’ storage areas from time to time…
It was a buy, even though the boat was in miserable condition, with a stucked big-block engine and a leaking hull. The hope was that the boat would be in water within a couple of years, but as everyone knows, both time and money are a finite resource…
It would turn out that the restoration took exactly 20 years, but the good thing that this brought was that all the work could be carried out with the utmost precision, and no detail or surface condition was left untouched, unless it met Pelle’s high standards. Unfortunately, the original engine was no longer available, but a 1965 Chris Craft 327 was found in 2005 and still made a reasonable contemporary alternative.
Not completely untouched, the boat is in very good condition today and was in the Riva clubs stand at the Stockholm boat show in 2023. Now the boat is for sale and interested parties can contact Pelle for more info on phone +46 705699295, preferably via SMS first! Or you can contact the webmaster via the website’s contact form.
This is one of few Rivas sold in Sweden and well worth staying in Sweden!