For its 50th anniversary, Nautor’s Swan has produced the ClubSwan 50, a yacht so radical and so classy it had Toby Hodges running out of superlatives

For its 50 anniversary, Nautor’s Swan have launched their new racer-cruiser, the ClubSwan 50. She is the most extreme-looking production yacht we’ve ever seen. No computer-enhanced renderings could do justice to the yacht as seen for the first time – she is utterly, fantastically awesome.

Nautor has well and truly removed any shackles for this contemporary beast. It has unleashed a design so fresh she deserves an MTV documentary of her own.

But yes, she’s a Swan, even if the only thing that looks Swan-like about her is the coveline with its familiar blue arrow. Nautor’s Swan has often been ahead of the curve – the Finnish/Italian company has been building lightweight carbon flyers for over a decade now – and for its 50th anniversary it wanted to produce a spectacular yacht. I think I can agree it has achieved that rather handsomely.

Why is she so cool? Just look at the design features. She’s aggressive and flared, with muscular, powerful lines that ooze raw sex appeal. Designer Juan Kouyoumdjian seems to have pushed all contemporary features to the extreme: the pronounced, curved reverse sheer and stem together with the menacing bowsprit forward that creates a swordfish look; the forward sprayrail and hard chine aft; the prominent flare to the quarters and the angular companionway.

The mast is positioned well aft, deck-stepped and raked back like a multihull. This creates a massive J area for flying powerful A-sails, combined with a potent square-top mainsail. It’s monohull meets multihull territory, raceboat meets luxury performance. If there were a Top Trumps game for monohull design this would be the card to hold.

Take a look and see our assessment of this exciting new yacht in our boat test video.