Car or boat? Amphicar was both, and neither
Man has always had fantasies about dual-purpose vehicles, such as cars that fly or convert to boats. These dreams were often featured in craft magazines such as Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, where breathless stories predicted ever more astonishing breakthroughs in cars-as-boats or sometimes cars-as-planes.
There is, however, a vehicle that actually brought this dream to reality: the Amphicar, an amphibious car introduced as a production vehicle in the early 1960s.
The German-built Amphicar was said to be inspired by the amphibious version of the Second World War Volkswagen Kubelwagen, Germany’s “Jeep,” known appropriately enough as the Schwimmwagen. Amphicar designer Hans Trippel, an amphibious-vehicle pioneer, had reportedly intended to use the VW drivetrain until he discovered that marine regulations prohibited the use of air-cooled engines.
After considering several alternatives, he found the best power-to-weight ratio to be a British 1,147-cc overhead-valve four-cylinder Triumph engine. It developed a modest but adequate 43 horsepower at 4,750 r.p.m., and was mounted in the rear of the steel-bodied car-boat behind the four-seater convertible’s passenger compartment.
Industrie Werke Karlsruhe of West Berlin was formed in 1961 to manufacture Amphicars. It soon moved to Karlsruhe, where most of them were built.
As they had to be licensed as both car and boat, they were required to carry, in addition to the normal road equipment, navigation lights and such marine safety gear as oars (folded up under the front seat), flares, lifejackets and a bilge pump.
The Amphicar was introduced at the 1959 Geneva auto show and was built from 1961 to ’68, during which time about 3,800 were pro- duced. They were largely unchanged over that period.
There was a lot of skepticism about the Amphicar’s sea-going capability until Trippel demonstrated its seaworthiness by arranging to have one cross the English Channel in 1962.
The performance of the Amphicar was modest, whether on land or water. Car and Driver tested one and reported the 1,043-kilogram Amphicar would accelerate to 100 km/h in a leisurely 43 seconds. Top speed was estimated at 105 km/h. In amphibious mode, they recorded a top speed of six knots, or about 11 km/h.
Amphicars never really caught on as either cars or boats, but they did prove to be a wonderful attention getter and novelty item.
During a test drive in one, I found the Amphicar rolled along on land with a gentle rocking motion and was somewhat prone to wandering about. Its aerodynamics are certainly not in the Audi or Tesla class.
The low gearing makes the little engine churn out lots of revs to keep up with traffic. And while it may be capable of more than 100 km/h, it definitely feels safer and more at home in the 65 to 70 km/h range.
But one always has the impression that the Amphicar would rather be a boat. On city streets it feels a little like, dare I say, a fish out of water.
Changing the Amphicar from car to boat is surprisingly easy. After securing the specially sealed doors with the large lever at the lower rear corner of each door, the clutch is depressed and a small lever beside the main four-speed shifter engages the twin nylon propellers. The car is driven straight into the water in first gear until it begins to float and the propellers take over. First gear is then disengaged.
One soon adapts to the change in status from driver to captain as the Amphicar chugs along nicely at four or five knots. In spite of seeming to sit alarmingly low in the water, there are still more than 50 centimetres of freeboard. There is no rudder, so steering is accomplished, vaguely, in the water the same way it is on land — by turning the front wheels.
First-time pilots sometimes flail away on the brake pedal, which of course is futile. A hand throttle is provided to relieve the strain on the right foot — cruise control in the true sense of the word.
To return to dry land, one simply re-engages first gear, drives out of the water and disengages the propellers.
There is one warning that I feel obliged to pass on. If you have any tendency to shyness, have nothing whatsoever to do with the Amphicar. Wherever it appears it attracts phenomenal attention, including waves, smiles and, most of all, looks of disbelief, particularly in the Amphicar-asboat mode.
Once back on land, true to its offbeat character, the Amphicar emits a very unladylike stream of water out of the rear (stern?) as the bilge pump does its necessary work.