Westx has a leg up in that I've never even seen an Epic. I agree with your point about possibly rolling it out too early. My preference would be to get her dialed in and a small inventory ready to support the first sales after rollout. My guess is that there were monetary reasons that wasn't possible. Just a guess. Remember, building ANYTHING as large and complex as a boat is a BIG deal.
Yes, the name annoys me, but Chris came to us at Epicmarine early to let us know what was coming and that he chose that name before he even knew about the TOYOTA boats.
I exchanged emails with Chris and gave him some well-intended feedback before even seeing his design. By accident, we met in person at OWC while he was wrapping up the Surf Expo there. He strikes me as an energetic entrepreneur, not a used-car salesman as Kyle and a few others on Wakeworld paint him as. Seems it's real easy for people to bash him and his startup.
As far as hype goes, my only complaints are giving names to everything (e.g. Vector Steer, Drop Zone, etc.), but have you looked around at the rest of the industry? Boatbuilders are friggin trademark queens fo sho.
I have to admit that I encouraged him to offer some GOOD sound system options from the factory. Most 'core' riders aren't going to be happy with a single Kenwood amp and sub. Some will roll from the dealer to an autosound place for JL amps, subs, NVS, etc. My point was design a few packages up to and including totally sick and offer them as options. He then put in a decent system and everybody bashes him for raising the price.
As far as I can tell, his original goal was to build a boat that had no bling - just for the core riders. To me, that was a real niche play, definitely not heading after the mainstream. All in all, it seems like he's kept to that idea.
It sounds like there are still some prototype issues and that is the stuff that keeps getting mentioned. Most of that is really easy stuff, but as we can see, the devil is in the details. I have no idea how the shape of the hull performs. I did see early pics with a really nose-high attitude. For sure, I'd get some really good boat whores out for several days with a zillion different sacks to experiment with the wake tuning. My hope would be that the manufacturer can learn and provide recommendations on exactly how to optimize the wake for varying conditions. With the amount of bow rise I saw, I'd assume that boat would porpoise even unweighted, so maybe that's why the trim tab in the back. Wouldn't be the first time a towboat (especially v-drive) has had to do that.
I'm sure Chris would prefer that Epic in Texas to be out towing - if he wanted to make a party barge, he'd have put a pole on it. He wants core riders that'd rather spend duckets on a turn-key, no compromise towboat. I've no idea if his Epic is there yet, but know that's what his goal is.
