This is a new one to me. Are you saying an equivalent priced Valiant gets a better insurance rate than a Hunter? I may be wrong as I find insurance a miserable necessity, but when I owned both a Valiant and a Hunter at the same time I didn't notice any difference in the rate other than due to value even though the boats were fairly close in price (20% diff). Given the similarity of value it seems like it would have been fairly easy to see a preferential rate for one design or the other.

Do you have some specifics to support this? It's an interesting concept that seems really controversial and I've never heard of it before. Who decides what is good construction and what isn't?