In the late 70's to around 1982 a lot of hunters were designed by a well highly respected designer named John Cherubini. BTW Cherubini designs are very recognizable.
1981 Cherubini 33
These boats were well made.
In the mid 80's and well into the 90's Hunter as well as many other builders (Hunter specifically) suffered through high interest rates, High costs for petroleum products so they felt that they could stay solvent by producing more boats cheaply. Essentially through economies of scale. This turned out not so good. It’s not that all the Hunters produced during this time frame were bad boats but they had a good percentage of them that were not so good. You also have to keep in mind that Hunter has been the one of the highest volume builders in the world and still is. Because of this you will hear more negative things simply because there are more of them. You also must remember that any used boat is only as good as the PO maintained it and Hunter, through aggressive pricing sold a lot of boats to people who didn’t know squat about boating and maintaining systems. That didn’t help the brand either.
In the late 90’s Hunter began to design boats under Glenn Henderson and build to the same certification standard that all the other builders meet and lately, even to CE standards.