Check out these rugged amphibious vehicles built for — and in — Canadian climates
A pair of amphibious vehicles designed for search and rescue in the most inhospitable of environments will find their manufacturing home in Parry Sound, Ont., beginning this year.
The SHERP is an extreme offroad ATV so capable of crawling over logs and lakes alike that Business Insider labelled it “the honey badger of the automotive world.” And the ATASD (Amphibious Trimaran with Aerostatic Discharge), created by Interconn Developments, is a hovercraft built to move people and/or cargo over a variety of water and ground surfaces.
Together, the duo is nicely set up to provide full coverage to hard-toreach communities, such as those in northern Ontario.
The vehicles are expected to perform search and rescue and military or civil operations in difficult winter terrain.
The ATASD looks rugged and extremely capable, but we’ve seen cooler hovercraft. The SHERP, on the other hand, is a beast. It goes seamlessly from off-road monster to a type of gas-powered, fourwheeled paddle boat.
It’s not exactly skimming over the lake surface — top speed is six kilometres an hour on water — but it’s moving and not sinking. On solid ground, it looks unstoppable, though probably not unflippable.
“Obstacles don’t block the path, they are the path,” says a tagline on SHERP’s website.