Mangusta

The yard that made the open yacht grow up

Mangusta was founded in 1985 by Giuseppe Balducci, a Tuscan boatbuilder who had trained in the yards of Viareggio before setting up on his own. The name is the Italian word for mongoose, the animal known for taking on and beating the cobra, and it was chosen as a direct challenge to Cobra, then the dominant open sport boat brand built by Tecnomarine. From the start the yard set out to build fast open boats with real presence rather than stripped down racers. That competitive streak still runs through the brand today.

The defining moment came in the 1990s with the Mangusta 80. Until then open yachts had rarely passed 80 feet, and owners who wanted length usually gave up either speed or living space to get it. The 80 showed that a large planing open boat could stay fast while offering the room and comfort of a much heavier motor yacht. That idea became the Maxi Open category, and Mangusta has been identified with it ever since. Over four decades the yard has delivered more than 300 yachts.

Three ranges, one engineering culture

Today the fleet is organised into three distinct families. The Maxi Open REV range carries the original open sport idea forward with composite planing hulls and waterjet drive, topped by the 165 REV flagship. The GranSport line is a fast displacement crossover in aluminium that trades outright top speed for far greater range and ocean crossing ability. The Oceano line moves to steel hulls and full displacement for owners who want a long range yacht built to commercial standards.

What links the three is a shared design and engineering approach rather than a single look. Alberto Mancini has shaped the GranSport and Oceano exteriors, while the newer REV range was drawn by Igor Lobanov of Lobanov Design. Naval architecture on the larger displacement yachts has come from the Ausonio studio in Viareggio. Interiors are handled in house by the Overmarine Group design office, with each yacht treated as a semi custom project so owners can set the layout and materials.

Built on the Tuscan coast

Overmarine Group builds its yachts in Tuscany, across sites near Viareggio, Massa and Pisa that together cover around 190,000 square metres. Viareggio has been a centre of Italian yacht building for more than a century, and the yard sits inside that dense network of specialist suppliers and craftspeople. Keeping the work close means the group can control the build stages from lamination or metalwork through to final fit out.

The business remains family owned and family run. Giuseppe Balducci's children, Maurizio and Katia, now lead the group, and in 2025 the yard marked forty years since its founding. That continuity matters to buyers of yachts that take years to build and decades to own. It also explains why the brand has stayed focused on fast open and crossover yachts rather than chasing every market segment.