Amphicar in action

Amphicar in action

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Details

Location

Strangford Lough

Year

1960s

Date

1960s

Length

37sec

Audio

sound

Format

film

black and white

Source

UTV

Courtesy

UTV

Rights Holder

ITV

It is illegal to download, copy, print or otherwise utilise in any other form this material, without written consent from the copyright holder.

Description

A road-water car that allows its owner to cross Strangford Lough.

Notes

This vehicle, which looks like the kind of contraption James Bond might have in his garage, is an Amphicar, or amphibious car. It was designed to drive both on land and in the water. Initially critics were unsure how safe these craft would be, Time magazine’s Dan Neil described it as, “A vehicle that promised to revolutionise drowning”, according to him, “Its flotation was entirely dependent on whether the bilge pump could keep up with the leakage.” Nonetheless, between 1961 – when they were first produced for public purchase – and 1965 some 4,000 Amphicars were manufactured. Remarkably some 700 remain in existence.

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