90 Convertible

Built under a line drawn by regulation, not by choice

Viking shrank its flagship convertible specifically to stay under the 24-metre threshold that would have triggered Tier III emissions equipment, then rebuilt the boat's proportions around that cut rather than simply scaling the 92 down. Pat Healey told InTheBite the change removed 13 inches of beam and roughly 27 to 40 inches of length depending on which dimension is measured, and Power & Motoryacht's own report on the design brief notes the salon lost about 17.5 inches in the process, a real interior trade-off rather than a marketing footnote.

The 92 Convertible ran seven years and 21 hulls from 2015 and remains, in InTheBite's words, arguably the greatest large sportfishing yacht ever built, which made replacing it a genuine risk rather than a routine model refresh. Viking's answer was to spend a reported 15 to 20 million dollars on the redesign, sources disagree on the exact figure, and cut more than 240 new molds for the hull, topsides, flybridge and interior rather than adapt existing tooling. The order book moved before the boat existed: ten hulls sold at the 2021 announcement and 15 to 16 by the time hull one reached Miami in February 2023.

Engines, drivetrain and the numbers that came off the sea trial

Standard power is twin Caterpillar C32A diesels at 1,925 horsepower each, stepping up to CAT C32B at 2,433 horsepower or twin MTU 16V2000 M96L at 2,635 horsepower, the combination every published sea trial has actually tested. Marlin Magazine's trial boat, running the MTU pair through ZF 5000A gearboxes at a 2.962:1 ratio and turning five-blade Veem propellers, recorded 39.3 knots on GPS and settled into a 32 to 33 knot cruise around 2,100 rpm, with roughly 582 to 600 nautical miles of range depending on load. Viking's own literature sets a 40-knot daily-use target for the model, a figure the fastest published trial came close to but did not quite reach.

No sea trial found anywhere tested the standard CAT C32A engines or the mid-tier C32B option, so every published performance number on this page describes the top MTU package, not the boat as most buyers will actually order it. The enclosed bridge and the raised, glass-helmed Sky Bridge that followed later in 2023 both carry a speed penalty against the open convertible, roughly 37 knots against 38 to 39, from the added weight and windage of the extra structure. Twin 40 kW Kohler generators, a hydraulic bow thruster and a Seakeeper 35 gyro stabilizer are standard fitment, though at least one delivered hull has been specified with the larger Seakeeper 40 instead, and Viking's own spec sheet and one dealer's sheet disagree on head count, seven against five, a discrepancy this page cannot resolve without seeing the individual hull's layout drawing.

Viking cut the 90 Convertible under the 24-metre Tier III emissions line on purpose, then rebuilt the boat's proportions around that cut while refusing to shrink the one number that mattered to buyers: the 92's 224-square-foot cockpit came across untouched.

A cockpit that did not shrink with the hull

The 90's cockpit measures 224 square feet, identical to the outgoing 92, with a 203-gallon transom livewell and fishbox and twin 103-gallon in-deck fishboxes carried over rather than reduced. That was the one dimension Viking chose not to touch when everything else shrank to clear the 24-metre line, and it is the detail every fishing-focused review leads with. Design Manager David Wilson told InTheBite the exterior was drawn to be as sleek and low-profile as the smaller footprint allowed, and the layout change buyers notice first is the salon entry door moving to starboard, which let Viking turn the mezzanine seating to face aft instead of forward, a change made directly in response to owner feedback on the 92.

Engine room finish draws the same praise across outlets that do not usually agree on much: Power & Motoryacht's Charlie Levine wrote that he felt like you could operate on someone in there, it is that clean, and Marlin's own trial team called out more than seven feet of headroom and a bright Awlgrip finish. Boat International's reviewer, aboard with demo captain Bill Cannan, did flag the boat as light on railings at the time of testing, a detail Viking was reportedly addressing, and the same reviewer noted Cannan's own aside that open-bridge outrigger towers are nicknamed three-hour towers for how long they take to clean after a trip.

What it costs to buy and what nobody has published yet

Viking does not publish a base price; dealer SI Yachts puts a standard CAT-powered hull at just under 12.2 million dollars, rising past 14 million fully equipped once the MTU engine upgrade and enclosed bridge are added, the two options SI Yachts prices at roughly one million and 400,000 dollars respectively. A 2021-era estimate from Power & Motoryacht put the starting figure at 12 million dollars and up at announcement, so list pricing has moved only modestly against inflation and demand. On the brokerage side, the clearest data point is a 2025 hull named Zatara, twin MTU-powered with under 500 hours as of February 2026, listed by Galati Yacht Sales at 14,595,000 dollars.

Running costs specific to this model are not published anywhere this research could find; the only figure available is the yacht industry's general rule of thumb of 10 to 15 percent of purchase price a year, which on a boat in this price bracket means six-to-seven-figure annual carrying costs before a single hour is run. Delivery, per dealer SI Yachts, typically runs under a year from deposit for a custom build, though Power & Motoryacht's broader reporting on Viking's build process puts the range at several months to over a year depending on customization. Viking builds the 90 alongside the rest of its range at its roughly 880,000-square-foot New Gretna, New Jersey campus and sells exclusively through an authorized dealer network rather than direct.

Buying used: what there is to check, and what there is not yet

There is no published defect, recall or survey history specific to the 90 Convertible, because the model has been in production only since 2023, and the structural problems that show up in forum threads about older Vikings, stringer rot and balsa-core water intrusion around scuppers and transom doors, belong to hulls built two to four decades ago under a different construction process, not to this boat. That is a genuine gap for a used-boat buyer rather than a clean bill of health: nobody has owned a 90 Convertible long enough to generate the kind of forum or survey record that exists for older, higher-volume Viking models.

What does exist is dealer SI Yachts' observation that late-model, low-hour Vikings generally resell quickly and close to their original price, and a factory-backed service network built for the volume actually on the water, including SI Yachts' own Staten Island yard and Viking's Riviera Beach, Florida service centre. No independently posted owner review, the kind a private buyer writes on The Hull Truth after a season aboard, turned up in this research; every quoted voice on this page is a Viking executive, a factory demo captain or a magazine journalist on a company-arranged sea trial. A buyer weighing a used hull today is, in effect, relying on Viking's own quality reputation and a three-year-old model's still-thin track record rather than any independent long-term data.

Who it is for: A tournament-focused buyer who wants the outgoing 92's full-size fishing cockpit and Viking's factory and dealer support network in a hull that clears the 24-metre regulatory line, and who accepts that every published performance figure describes the top MTU engine option rather than the standard CAT package most price quotes start from.