Originally posted by old rigger:
BBTAHITI,
in a nut shell, Tahiti was Dick Schuster, started in Long Beach, moved to Bellflower. Sold to Bell in about '68. Bell was a big company, Bell helmets, Bell speed equip. and so on. Moved to Cerritos off of the 605 fwy about the same time. Schuster and a guy from Bell, Jerry Groom (who didn't know a boat from dump truck) started Hawaiian by back-dooring material from Tahiti. (Hawaiian was originaly going to be called Tiki, and we even had sold a few boats with the name plates on them but Bell had a court order to make the name change.) Groom went to prison, where I'm sure he got to know what the term back dooring really meant, and Schuster stayed out of jail for reasons unknown. When Hawaiian went belly up, Groom fled to New York, and Schuster continued to build boats off and on under the Hawaiian name. Dick also bought the 'Sun Ray' boat company for his kids so they would have something to do. They nose-dived that shop as well.
When Hawaiian went under, they ****ed alot, and I mean ALOT of parts suppliers. Schuster, from the begining of Tahiti until the time he hooked up with Groom was a stand up guy that took alot pride in the boats he built. The early Tahiti's are build like tanks. I don't know what happened to him after that, except maybe greed. And I never understood why he hooked with such a dick headed prick as Jerry.
Dick never screwed his employees, in fact we were all making money hand over fist back then, we couldn't build enough boats, but I think there are still hard feelings to this day by some of the guys that took it in the shorts when the doors were closed.
I love Tahiti's, grew up with them so I have a soft spot for them. Great little boats.
I had a 69'glenco "tahiti"what can you tell me about that?
[This message has been edited by old rigger (edited March 05, 2002).]