What are your fave console style RIB's? I'm thinking like 12 footer. One friend of mine said he favors the Walker Bay.
We have a Walker Bay 310FTD WITHOUT console, but thought maybe useful to comment.
First, quality on ours seems OK, even though we had to have some (apparently successful) re-glueing done after several years of mistreatment and some minor leaks -- which didn't cause the boat to be unusable at all.
Second, the folding transom is no longer a useful feature for us; we got a trailer, so we don't need to fold and cram the thing into the back of the Suburban every Fall like we did before. I expect a rigid transom would be a good thing, or at least slightly better. No issues with out hinge, though.
Third, I think the WB console looks pretty nifty... but it adds a bunch of pounds and I'm not sure we could carry it as well on our cantilevered swim platform mount. If less cantilever, maybe... but then that would remove an advantage, since we can now (with cantilever) walk between dinghy and boat.
But then it also came down to cost. We needed a dinghy, the console would be easier on my back and neck (less twisting), but I didn't happen to have the extra $$$ at the time. That would have been be $$$ for console version, and $$$ for davit strengthening.
My thought was to maybe eventually add the console to our boat, which is still possible, might do, down the pike sometime, at our convenience.
-Chris