As brief career resumes go, 20 and more water speed records, five Gold Cup winners, four President’s Race winners and numerous other speed trials and racing victories is not a bad start, but today, John Ludwig Hacker is perhaps even more revered as the father of the modern American runabout. Indeed, the body of work of this one-time Detroit book keeper who studied naval architecture at night school is testament to the old adage that racing improves the breed. In his quest for speed, Hacker pioneered the planing V-hull, which skimmed over the water rather than bludgeoned it aside. And in the late 1910s, he began to apply his principles to leisure craft, building them first at the Hacker Boat Co. in Detroit and then expanding into a facility at Mt. Clemens, Michigan, to satisfy demand from wealthy leisure boaters for his exquisite and supremely stylish, hand-crafted, mahogany boats, which blue-printed the classic runabout template: a midmounted, covered engine with control cockpit forward and accommodation aft, all with the aim of improving balance, comfort and ride. The signature tumblehome on the flared stern of this Mt. Clemens-built, 24-foot 1927 Hacker-Craft Double Cockpit Runabout—which was formerly part of the Terry Adderley Collection—isn’t just a mere styling flourish; it prevented squatting and allowed Hacker-Craft runabouts to rise above their element and skim at high speed with a famously sea-kindly motion, a feature much appreciated by wealthy clients ranging from Edsel Ford and J.W. Packard to the King of Siam. Indeed, John L Hacker had forged close links with the auto titans, and though a close friend of Henry Ford, the motive power in this example known as “Bootlegger” is provided by a Chrysler straight-8, with the corresponding “Chrysler Powered” legend on the chrome instrument surround testifying to that. Restored and supplied with a double-axle trailer with diamond-plate side platforms and stainless fenders, Bootlegger’s elegant, sheer, trademark green, leather upholstery and characteristic split- vee windscreen evoke that heady era of the roaring ‘20s that was also the sweet spot of John Ludwig Hacker’s career. More than that, if you take one more look at that flared-stern tumblehome, there’s more than a hint of the styling cues that Carlo Riva adopted a quarter of a century later in the 1950s, once again pointing to just how important John L. Hacker is.
