Here's a video of someone who had restored theirs and boated around with it a bit.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Amphicar!
While up in Sutter Creek a few weekends back, we came across a winery whose theme was old cars. Inside of a warehouse was a real, live Amphicar! The Amphicar was a German creation from the early 60s that was both a car and a boat. I'd seen videos and pictures before, but never a real one. Around 3700 of them were made.
If you look carefully, you can see the propellers under the rear end.
This Amphicar wasn't quite ready to jump in the water, but it was certainly restorable.
Here's a video of someone who had restored theirs and boated around with it a bit.
Here's a video of someone who had restored theirs and boated around with it a bit.
There's one running around here, too: I actually saw it tootling around town a couple of years ago! It also got a writeup in the local paper.
ReplyDeleteThey evidently last a lot longer when they are only used in fresh water, like the Great Lakes. Salt water corrosion is murder on car bodies.
There are more of them around than I thought, according to Wikipedia there are still around 700 of them, out of an original production run of about 4000.
I would imagine that the local surf would sink this in no time flat.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, whenever I see car commercials where the car is driving on the sand at the beach and sometimes splashing in the water, all I can think is that the car will be in the junkyard in about a month or two.
There is a pretty active club of them up here in the Twin Cities.
ReplyDeleteYou can pretty much guarentee that there will be a story on them every June or July as they drive into one of the Minneapolis lakes.
Personally, I wouldn't go in to Lake Superior with that thing. Probably not Michigan either. Little lakes would be fine.
We have a bus-boat version here in Seattle:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ridetheducksofseattle.com/
I haven't taken one of their tours, but it does look like fun!
That's one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen in my life!
ReplyDeleteCaptcha: Pudentat: (n.) What the German version of Tweety Bird saw, as in, "Achtung! Ich haff zeen ze pudentat! Ve haff vays of making you zee ze pudentat."