Chris Craft probably did not wait until the end of a model year to make changes. This could well be a transitional boat, caught right at the point when the stock of old gauges ran out and they dipped into the new shipment. The motor is also something that I suspect is a "ask-for-dealer-option".
Naturally the boat could have been upgraded with that motor, but mysteries like this are sometimes only unravled when you get the data from the Mariners Museum, and then sometimes they are never unravled.
There is a chance they don't know for sure what model year the boat is.
Tom
|