Demise of the Laser 4000

If these moulds still exist and you could build the same boat in modern materials and with a carbon rig they'd be very different animals. I know the Boss was carbon and had a carbon rig but it was very early days and im sure the resin system was still polyester.

Incomprehensible to me; asymetric trapeze boats are so much fun.  Some blame the arrival of the lighter and faster RS800, and the turgid attitude of Performance Sailcraft didn't help; they never allowed classes to develop; just bunged them on the market and, when they stopped selling, withdrew them - so compared to the RS800 it is certainly dated.

Nevertheless, the 4000 is still alive; I've seen 6 to 10 boats at opens, Rooster now sell all the bits, hulls are cheap as chips. 

They are not perfect, the fully battened rig tends to power up suddenly (a pain on the beach) and the tall and heavy aluminium mast and rounded hull shape can make them heel alarmingly if you get a roll tack or a gybe wrong.  The hull is pretty heavy too, even without the correctors, and if you are a light pairing you have an already heavy boat full of lead correctors to pull up the slipway!  The construction is Performance Sailcraft standard - sprayed chopped strand fibre - which is heavy for its stiffness and tends to develop soft spots; it should really have been GRP matting over foam.
Had it been re-developed with an epoxy hull (as we did with the 3000) and a carbon mast, maybe a slightly softer main sail (the new Rooster one probably is) it would be / have been a great boat.   

One of the great things about the 4000 is that it's fast enough to be fun, but easy enough to sail that you can focus on racing, and also jump in with a different helm/crew and get up to speed fairly quickly.

Yes it's heavy, but that means that crew weight makes less of a difference to total weight, and that the weight equalisation works over a huge range. The 800 is a great boat, but much more limited in terms of weight range. And you need to practice more to make it go fast!