Car For Land And Water

9:02pm UK, Wednesday September 03, 2003

The ultimate "boy's toy" - a high-speed land and water vehicle - has been launched on the River Thames.

The £150,000 amphibious vehicle is designed to reach speeds of 100mph on land and over 30mph on water and can switch between the two surfaces at the switch of a button.

The car that's a boat

According to its designers it is neither a boat with wheels nor just a waterproof car.

Gibbs Technologies says that no other road-legal amphibian has managed to exceed 6mph on water.

The Gibbs Aquada took seven years to reach fruition, with 70 engineers spending one million hours and tens of millions of pounds to create the vehicle.

Company founder and chairman Alan Gibbs said he had filed 60 patents and compiled with every regulation for cars and boats in the rule book.

"This is new in the way that helicopters were new or Harrier jump jets were new," he said.

"It's a genuine amphibian which has been an international project but it's British engineering which has made it possible."

Since the invention of the car, there have been many attempts to develop amphibian vehicles.

Previous attempts have failed because of the vehicle's inability to climb out of the water and skim along the surface.

However Neil Jenkins, managing director of Gibbs Technologies, claimed this engineering breakthrough was a world first.

He said that by licensing the technology, a whole new spectrum of vehicles would be born.

The company is currently producing a launch series of 100 vehicles due to be available later this year.

The company believes that people will pay for the "freedom and experience" the novelty vehicle will allow.

"It is in the first instance a recreational vehicle, a sports car and a sports boat," said Mr Gibbs.

"But it could be a commuter city vehicle which avoids commuter congestion. The Thames is a perfect location to make use of this vehicle as it has no speed limit and is greatly under-utilised."