How often do you see an Amphicar? In a desert? I caught this one at a traffic light, and the owner was kind enough to pose for a quick snapshot. He tells me there are about 500 of them still left, which is not bad out of a total production of 4000, from 1961-1967! It obviously carries a valid boat registration, and the Nevada road plate reads “MY BOAT”.
Learn more about the Amphicar on these websites:
i always thought these were cool cars. i saw one once go into the water. i remember thinking that the water line was awfully close to the top of the door. cool non the less.
I saw a yellow one in Sweetwater, NJ a couple of weeks ago. The owner was taking anyone that wanted to on a land/water ride. Everyone loved it.
That’s a great find. Years ago I saw one of these chugging proudly down the Charles River in Boston, the owner looking happy as a clam.
Here is the back end of one on display in the auto museum in Oshawa, Ont.
Here is the front end, a 1964 model
Apparently, comedian Jeff Dunham owns one or two of these, and they were featured last season on Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC. They’re 1962 models, IIRC.
https://www.facebook.com/jaylenosgarage/videos/1033406100025026
MY BOAT is a pretty good personalized plate. How about LNDYCHT or NAUTICL?
😛
LBJ had an Amphicar that he used on his ranch to terrify unsuspecting guests by heading for the water and announcing that he had no brakes.
This practice is actually dramatized in the recent HBO movie All the Way, with Bryan Cranston as LBJ! It’s not a bad movie, but it’s worth seeing just for that scene.
President Lyndon Johnson had one of these at his Texas ranch. He liked to terrify unsuspecting passengers by screaming the brakes failed and driving full speed into a lake. LBJ also had 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible at the ranch, which he would use for giving tours at 70 mph plus on rutted dirt roads, while drinking a tumbler of Cutty Sark.
LBJ liked nice cars. In 1965 he gave daughter Luci a new Covette for her 18th birthday. While president, he was greatly annoyed by a ratty, old ’52 Chevy that he frequently saw parked on White House grounds. When LBJ discovered it belonged to aide Bill Moyers, he ordered him never to park it at the White House again.
He also had a series of Imperials, reading a book about him years back, when J Edgar Hoover was arriving at the airport, LBJ decided to pick him up. Hoover had rules that he was to be in the middle of the back seat with an agent on each side as that would protect him the most in a crash. LBJ got a hold of Hoover’s hand and led him to his ’59 Imperial LeBaron and shoved him in the passenger side front, rapidly got in the drivers side and burned rubber taking off before other agents could get there. Hoover also had a rule about not going over 45 mph, and LBJ was terrifying Hoover at 75-100 mph on the road, enjoying every moment of it.
Huge $$$ collectable cars now days, my young son and I had a ride in one back in the 1960s on a small pond at Adventure Land Park in Medina,il.
25 miles west of Chicago, it was closed long ago.
You can now get a ride in an Amphicar near Disney World. They operate in the lake in the middle of the shopping/entertainment plaza that used to be called Downtown Disney, but has a different name now that escapes me.
Disney Springs
We had a red Amphicar buzzing around the Cape Canaveral area when I was a kid in the late 1960s. The salt water of the Intracoastal Waterway caused the thing to become rustier and rustier with each passing year. If only had the body/hull been made of fiberglass like most small boats.
I remember seeing one of these on the road when I was a very young kid in Fort Wayne. In a city with three rivers and a number of lakes within easy driving distance it must have seemed like a good idea to at least one person there.
Unfortunately, from what I understood it made for a bad boat and a bad car. Some compromises are like that.
You just said exactly what I had come here to say — as a general rule, when you try to combine two different kinds of vehicles with conflicting design requirements you end up with a compromise that doesn’t do either particularly well. From what I’ve heard the Amphicar was adequate as a car but made for a just barely seaworthy and very slow boat (having wheels hanging off the bottom of your boat will do that). Conversely those amphibious vehicles from WWII were primarily meant to be boats that could be driven up the beach and maybe a short distance on the road. They supposedly handled terribly on land. Not that I’ve had any experience with either one; that’s just what I’ve hears elsewhere.
And the same applies to combining cars and airplanes. Those Terrafugia Transition “flying cars”, or perhaps more accurately “roadable airplanes”, are both bad planes and bad cars from what I’ve heard.
It has to be said that the floating car has proved more practicable than the flying car so far.
I wonder if that’s at least in part because you don’t need a special license to operate a boat in most places.
I don’t think that removing the licensing requirement would make flying cars work better.
I strongly concur with hubba!
Molt Taylor was the most successful with “flying cars”, his did work. The guy who came along later and tried adapting a Pinto to the same type of structure proved Pinto’s could explode other than being rear ended.
You know, with the recent advent of large hurricanes in major metropolitan areas, seems like a modern Amphicar could make a comeback in those markets.
I have always liked these. In the early 60s, there was a dealership on St. Charles Rock Road in the St. Louis area.
My parents frequented a store in the area, and after badgering them to stop so I could look at one of these, they finally did!
Loved them ever since.
Nice .
Sad that so few are left .
In about 1965 I stopped at a Gulf Service Station in New England that had 5 or 6 of these as rentals, all were badly rusted out and two or three were turned on their sides for parts scavenging .
-Nate
Wheeler Dealers restored an Amphicar, look for the episode. Lots of rust and sheetmetal replacement needed.
We give rides in our 1964 Amphicar to museum members at a local lake every August. (We are WAY cheaper than Disney World, FWIW). It’s one of my favorite cars in the collection. As I tell guests, it’s not a great car, and it’s not a great boat, but it can do both, and is usually pretty reliable. Hans Trippel had quite a few notable amphibious designs in his day.
A very novel idea, but I always was curious as to why they used a steel structure when fiberglass had been in use for automotive as well as nautical use for many years prior.
The fins, the whitewalls, and the extremely short wheelbase relative to overall length, are endearing: full-on mid-century American automotive madness, wet or dry ?
According to one online source, besides looking rad the fins helped keep water splashes out of the engine vents. Don’t know if the whitewalls had any practical function. 😉
Reminds me of the novelty song “Wet Dream” by Kip Adotta. (Not what you think… was played on ’80s FM radio.)
https://youtu.be/6l1GvDWtccI
I seem to recall Dr. Demento playing that song on his show in the early 1980s.
Spent some time in Owen Sound, ONT as a kid and a neighbor across the street had one–my brother and I were fascinated by it and he let us sit in the car. He asked if we wanted a ride and told us to ask our Mom and this being 1970 she didn’t even talk to the guy, just “be home for supper”. The guy drove to a boat launch and into Georgian Bay we went. I remember not being super amazed, (Hell we had a pretty big boat that never left the water) but when done we thanked him. Honestly as a 7 year old I guess I figured the things were everywhere. Sure wish I had photos.
Seems like amphibious vehicles fall into two classes, cars with propellers, or boats with wheels. I haven’t seen many that don’t fit in one or the other. Not taking away from how cool the Amphicar is, or how nice this specific example is.
I remember seeing one of these from a distance at a boat dock and saying to the person that I was with, “that’s an Amphicar, the boat car. I swear it is!!!”. We got to the docks, and sure enough, it was in the water, but you had to see the bunch of people that were looking at it like “what just happened here? Did that car just DRIVE INTO THE WATER?”, hahahahaa. I wish that I had video of the people trying to process what just happened.
Great video Huell Howser rides in a Amphicar with it’s original owner bought new in 1967.
There used to be a few of them running around Portland,OR in the day. There was an episode of a TV show where they drive then in a river after asking directions on how to get to the other side
Great find Evan!
There used to be a red one in Lake St. Louis MO when I lived there about 10 years ago…saw it on the water exactly once, but saw it driving around periodically.
The Rinspeed Splash might have been one of the few that do both water and land well.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/g916/swimming-with-cars-9-amphibious-vehicles/
There is an Amphicar about 5km away from our place, walked by it once with the family and they didn’t believe it was also a boat until I showed them the propellors.
Here it is. Unfortunately the Amphicar is a prime example of the machine design rule where if you design something to do too many things it won’t be very good at any of them. Not a great car, and not a great boat.
Pretty high on the visual fun scale though!
I’ve bought every weird or unusual vehicle I could lay my hands on over the years, Our neighbors a block away had a red and a blue one. I got the blue one, cheap because of a little problem. Someone had to have taken it in salt water, a lot. I never got it in the water. What was visible looked decent and it was great for conversations. I sold it back to Ed, the guy I got it from. I did see a conversion on a Camaro convertible that was amazing, it would do about 30 on water and over 100mph on land and still looked almost normal. The wheels retracted in water. Only thing was the price was high, can’t remember how much.
Just checked amphibious cars and found Citroen Cx wagon, Volvo 240 wagon, Subaru wagon, Camaro convertible, and a real Lamborghini that all work as amphibious
Rode in one as a kid at an amusement park, with a small pond. I kept wondering what kind of car it is, thinking it was a customized 1960 Rambler.