Four Winns Horizon 180, 190, 200: 905 Listings Decoded

You are looking at a Four Winns Horizon because it is the boat that keeps showing up: a clean-looking 19-foot bowrider, family seating, a trailer included, and an asking price several thousand under the Chaparral parked next to it. The question is whether that gap is a bargain or a warning. So we measured it — 905 Four Winns Horizon listings observed between 14 June and 23 August 2026, against every other bowrider builder in our database.

The short answer

The Horizon is a genuine mid-market bowrider, and the used market treats it as one. Median asking price across the 52 active Horizon 170, 180, 190 and 200 listings is $7,950, middle half $5,500 to $12,900 — a range dragged down by how old this fleet is. Control for era and the picture sharpens: across model years 1998 to 2009, the median Four Winns bowrider asks $10,000, identical to Sea Ray, roughly $3,500 above Bayliner, and well under Chaparral, Regal and Cobalt.

It also survives. A 1986-to-1996 Four Winns bowrider still asks 54% of what a 2004-to-2009 one asks (52 and 14 listings respectively). Sea Ray holds 34% over the same spread on 307 and 115 listings. Cobalt holds 27%. Hulls nobody wants do not do that.

The catch is age. 45.3% of Horizon listings carry a pre-2000 model year, against 40.9% for the market as a whole. And in this fleet, price is not really a quality signal — it is a date of birth signal. The cheap ones are not hiding a secret. They are hiding a calendar.

What this rests on

Every figure below comes from BoatVerdict’s own listing database: US listings, private-party and dealer, priced between $800 and $2,000,000, excluding new boats and non-target craft. That is 905 Four Winns Horizon listings, of which 90 are active today and 531 are the core small hulls — the 170, 180, 190 and 200. Model buckets come from the listing title with the model year stripped out first, so a “2001” in the headline never gets read as a Horizon 200.

Two honest limits. These are asking prices, not sold prices, and sellers of old cheap boats ask especially optimistically. And stated hull length appears on only a fraction of listings, so we do not publish per-foot figures for individual models. No number here rests on fewer than 10 listings.

What each price band actually buys

This is the table that answers the real question. Four Winns Horizon 170, 180, 190 and 200 listings, grouped by asking price, showing the model year in the middle of each band.

Asking price	Listings	Median model year	Typical age in 2026	What you are buying
Under $5,000	146	1990	36 years	Plywood deck and stringers, carbureted engine, project risk
$5,000–$7,999	124	1996	30 years	Late-OMC era, fuel-system recall window, tired drive
$8,000–$11,999	123	2002	24 years	The value floor — EFI engines, still wood-era on some hulls
$12,000–$17,999	105	2007	19 years	Genmar-era build, best condition-per-dollar in the fleet
$18,000+	33	2004	22 years	Bigger or heavily optioned hulls, not newer ones

Read the last row carefully. Spending more than $18,000 in this fleet does not buy you a newer boat — the median year actually goes backwards, because that money is buying a 210, 220 or 230 with a tower and a big block, not a fresher 190. If newness is what you want, your ceiling is around $18,000 and your target is the 2005-to-2009 band.

The interesting bracket is $8,000 to $12,000. That is 123 listings clustered on a 2002 median, and it is where a Horizon stops being a restoration and starts being a boat you use this season. Below it, you are buying somebody else’s deferred maintenance at a discount that rarely covers the work.

Where the Horizon sits against its peers

Same boat type, same era: bowriders and runabouts, model years 1998 to 2009, medians only.

Brand	Listings	Median ask	Read
Cobalt	134	$28,995	Premium tier, priced like it
Regal	87	$14,900	Step above
Chaparral	108	$14,800	Step above
Four Winns	60	$10,000	Mid-market, same as Sea Ray
Sea Ray	616	$10,000	Volume brand, huge supply
Maxum	141	$10,000	Bayliner’s upmarket sibling
Rinker	86	$9,450	Mid-market
Glastron	118	$8,375	Value tier
Stingray	117	$6,950	Value tier
Bayliner	415	$6,500	Entry tier

The Horizon is priced identically to Sea Ray and roughly 54% above Bayliner for the same years and the same kind of boat. If someone tells you a Four Winns is a budget brand, the market disagrees by about $3,500 a boat. It is also not a Chaparral, and paying Chaparral money for one is how buyers get hurt. For how these hull types differ before you commit to a bowrider at all, start with the bowrider buying guide and, if you are weighing an enclosed bow, bowrider vs cuddy cabin.

One caution, the same one that applies to any retention figure: brands that start cheap have less distance to fall, so a high retention percentage flatters them. Bayliner scores well on that metric too, for reasons we unpack in are Bayliners really that bad?. Retention tells you a hull still has a market. It does not tell you the one in front of you is sound.

What the cheap ones are hiding

Nothing exotic. Four failure paths account for nearly all of the pain, and three of them are age-driven.

Water in the wood. Four Winns’ own 2012 Horizon 200 brochure lists fiberglass stringers as a standard hull feature. That is a 2012 boat. The 1980s and 1990s hulls that make up the cheap end of this fleet were built the way everyone built them: plywood deck, plywood-cored transom, wood stringers, all sealed under glass and covered with snap-in carpet. Water gets in through unsealed seat and fitting bolt holes, the carpet holds it against the deck, and rot works downward and aft. There is no clean year where Four Winns stopped using wood, so treat any build-year claim as a guess and bring a moisture meter. Our guides on soft spots in a boat floor and transom rot signs cover exactly what to press, tap and read.

The sterndrive, not the engine. Every classic Horizon in this size range is a sterndrive. The 2012 Horizon 200 shipped with Volvo Penta 225 to 270 hp or MerCruiser 220 to 260 hp; older 180s and 190s ran smaller four-cylinder and V6 blocks. The gas engine is rarely what ruins the season. The drive is: bellows, gimbal bearing, U-joints and the transom assembly behind them all have service lives measured in years, not hours, and a boat that sat has usually blown past them. Budget for it deliberately — MerCruiser bellows replacement has the real numbers.

Fuel systems on 1990s hulls. The USCG recall record has two campaigns with the Horizon’s name on it, both now closed. May 1994: 2,397 units of the 180 Freedom and 190 Horizon, possible fuel tank leak, campaign 940120T, closed March 1996. November 1995: 8,550 units of the 170H, 190H, 192 and 200H under OMC, cracking fuel fill fittings, campaign 950226T, closed November 2000. Both rated high severity. A closed campaign means the manufacturer completed the program, not that the boat in front of you was fixed. On any Horizon from that era, smell the bilge, look at the fill fitting, and treat a fuel odor as a walk-away until proven otherwise.

The trailer. Nearly every Horizon listing includes one, and the trailer is where buyers stop looking. On a 2012 Horizon 200, Four Winns rated the boat and engine at 2,920 to 3,070 lbs and the matched trailer at 1,051 to 1,234 lbs — roughly 4,000 to 4,300 lbs on the ball before fuel and gear. Check that your tow vehicle is rated for it, then check the trailer’s brakes, bearings and frame with the same suspicion you gave the hull.

The one thing nobody is pricing in

On 15 June 2026, Groupe Beneteau announced it will halt production at the Cadillac, Michigan plant in the third quarter of 2026 and divest Four Winns along with Glastron and Scarab Jet, after roughly €30 million in US operating losses across fiscal 2024 and 2025. Beneteau stated that after-sales service and spare parts supply will continue until a sale is completed.

Four Winns has changed hands before — OMC in 1987, Genmar in 2001 after OMC’s bankruptcy, Platinum Equity in 2010, Beneteau in 2014 — and the boats kept running through all of it. For a 20-year-old Horizon this matters less than the headline suggests: the engine is Mercury or Volvo, the drive is Mercury or Volvo, and the hardware is generic marine stock. What gets harder is Four Winns-specific trim, upholstery patterns and canvas. If you are buying a 2015-or-newer H-series boat and expecting factory support, weigh it. If you are buying a 2002 Horizon 200, buy the boat, not the brand.

Which Horizon to buy

• Horizon 200 / H200 — the sweet spot. 19’8” LOA, 8’4” beam, 19° deadrise, 35-gallon tank, rated to 1,400 lbs of people and gear. Big enough for six adults and a tow rope, small enough to launch alone.
• Horizon 190 / H190 — near-identical footprint, slightly less beam and capacity, usually a few thousand cheaper. Our largest single bucket at 163 listings, so you get choice.
• Horizon 180 / H180 — the trailer-friendly one. The later H180 runs about 17’11” LOA on a 7’7” beam with a 24-gallon tank, roughly 2,250–2,550 lbs dry, and the newest ones are outboard rather than sterndrive. Fewer seats, far less drive maintenance.
• Horizon 170 — 52 listings, median asking $3,895, median year 2000. Cheap for a reason. Buy it as a lake runabout, not as a family boat.

What to do next

1. Set your band before you look. Under $5,000 you are shopping 1990. At $8,000 to $12,000 you are shopping 2002. Decide which project you are actually willing to own.
2. Bring a moisture meter to every pre-2000 boat, and sound the deck, transom and stringer tops before you discuss price. This is the single check that separates a $9,000 boat from a $9,000 lesson.
3. Ask for the drive’s service history by date, not hours. Bellows and gimbal bearing age out on the calendar.
4. On any 1994-to-1996 hull, ask directly about the fuel recall work and look for the paperwork.
5. Survey anything over about $15,000. A pre-purchase survey runs $18 to $30 per foot — see boat survey cost — and one documented finding routinely moves the price more than the survey costs.

Not sure where a specific Horizon lands against the 905 in our set? Paste the listing and get an instant verdict — you will get a Buy Score, the red flags, and fair-price context before you call the seller.