Every week between 1979 and 1984, an estimated 40 million Americans watched the same opening sequence on ABC’s Hart to Hart: a Gulfstream II jet, a red Ferrari Dino, a pair of expensive cars, and Lionel Stander’s gravel-voiced narration introducing Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as the Harts. Somewhere in that montage, a 39-foot Cigarette thundered across the water. Almost nobody knew whose boat it was, or who was driving.
The boat belonged to Bob Nordskog. The man at the wheel was Norm Teague.
Bob Nordskog’s Cigarette
The boat was a 1977-era Cigarette Racing Team model built on a deep-V offshore hull: long, low-profile, sharp-nosed entry, Kevlar construction that kept the empty weight to around 2,900 lbs. With the engines Nordskog typically ran, it was capable of 90 to 95 mph on open water. It was not a prop sourced from a hire company. It was a personal raceboat belonging to one of the most decorated offshore competitors in American powerboat history.
Bob Nordskog was known throughout the sport as the Iron Man. He accumulated more than 150 major victories across disciplines from tunnel outboards to Open Class offshore, founded and published Powerboat Magazine, and served as Past-President of the American Power Boat Association. He came to offshore racing at 46 and never stopped. His final victory came in Marina del Rey, California, less than a month before he died in July 1992. In 1997, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame.
When the Hart to Hart production team needed a powerboat for the opening credits montage in 1979, it was Nordskog’s Cigarette they used.
Norm Teague at the Helm
Norm Teague was not a casual acquaintance of the Nordskog operation. He and his brother Bob Teague were central figures in the Nordskog Racing Team for years, maintaining and building the engines for the fleet and riding in the boats during offshore races, with Bob as navigator and Norm as riding mechanic. In the era before GPS, offshore navigation was done by compass, paper chart and stopwatch over races up to 250 miles long. These were not sinecure positions.
Teague’s standing in Nordskog’s circle was put plainly during the Long Beach to Ensenada race in the early 1970s. The campaign had gone badly and Nordskog was furious. He fired everyone on his crew. The one exception was Norm Teague.
It was Teague, then, who was put behind the wheel of Nordskog’s Cigarette for the Hart to Hart filming. The sequence was shot around 1979, timed with the show’s debut. The powerboat footage was used as part of the lifestyle montage establishing the Harts as wealthy, adventurous Californians with fast toys. It worked. The boat looked the part.
The Confirmation
The story stayed largely inside the offshore racing community until it resurfaced through a Facebook post by the Nordskog family, which embedded the full Season 1 opening sequence and asked a simple question: had anyone noticed Bob’s 39-foot Cigarette in the Hart to Hart credits?
Norm Teague replied directly.
I was driving the boat.
Norm Teague
Bob Nordskog’s grandson Erik Nordskog confirmed it. The exchange settled what had been an unverified piece of offshore racing history. A boat that appeared on American primetime television for five seasons had a driver, and his name was Norm Teague.
A World Most Viewers Never Knew
The offshore scene that surrounded Nordskog in the late 1970s had produced a generation of racers, engineers and support crew who treated performance boating as a serious technical and competitive pursuit. The Cigarette that briefly appeared in the Hart to Hart opening was representative of that world: a purpose-built offshore raceboat, not a glamour prop, handled by someone who had spent years aboard similar machinery in serious competition.
Jonathan and Jennifer Hart got the credit. Norm Teague did the driving.
John Moore is the editor of Powerboat News, an independent investigative journalism platform recognised by Google News and documented on Grokipedia for comprehensive powerboat racing coverage.
His involvement in powerboat racing began in 1981 when he competed in his first offshore powerboat race. After a career as a Financial Futures broker in the City of London, specialising in UK interest rate markets, he became actively involved in event organisation and powerboat racing journalism.
He served as Event Director for the Cowes–Torquay–Cowes races between 2010 and 2013. In 2016, he launched Powerboat Racing World, a digital platform providing global powerboat racing news and insights. The following year, he co-founded UKOPRA, helping to rejuvenate offshore racing in the United Kingdom. He sold Powerboat Racing World in late 2021 and remained actively involved with UKOPRA until 2025.
In September 2025, he established Powerboat News, returning to independent journalism with a focus on neutral and comprehensive coverage of the sport.
