Why An Amphibious Cozy Coupe Is As Genius An Idea As It Is Terrible

Like most people, I’m convinced that my demise will take place in a self-driving car someday. Maybe the autonymous machine I’m in will turn left in front of some guy running a very orange yellow light. Possibly my vehicle’s camera will see a big STOP sign in a personal injury lawyer’s billboard, throw out the anchor, and I’ll flattened from behind by a semi. I’m not exactly sure how, but I feel like there are a bunch of ways I could die.

Though a less likely cause of death (in my mind, anyway), I think my biggest automotive fear might be water, which I will somehow be full-self-driven into. Maybe the car mistakes a lake for a puddle, or ignores a raging two-foot-deep rapids that appear in the middle of a street after a monsoon-like rain. Anyway: it sure would be nice if one’s car could just boat in these situations.

So clearly, we need amphibious cars. But how to convince the general populace that amphi-cars are wonderful, not weird? I think I have the perfect way to normalize amphibious cars, and it doesn’t even involve cars or boats. Not for adults, anyway.

CarBoatHydrating

Our man Jason Torchinsky will wax endlessly about the perceived benefits of being able to enjoy time on the water near your home without having some type of boat that sits ninety-nine percent of the time taking up valuable driveway space (and needed maintenance when it inevitably doesn’t start from disuse).

Torch has proposed ideas for mainstream amphibious vehicles such as one based on the ever-popular Ford Maverick, where you pilot the thing in boat mode from the bed:

I’ve vomited up a few silly concepts myself for things like an amphibious camper that looks like the Shuttle Craft from Star Trek, with inflatable outriggers that pop out for the lower sides of the camper and a ladder to a sundeck on top. Dammit Jim, it’s a camper and a houseboat in one!

I’ve also had a hallucination of a sports car/sports boat combination that would be a replacement for the Vector W-8 with seats that rise through the roof panels which turn into a windshield for the boat. The rear of the roof slides open to the back of the car, allowing a “radar bar” to pivot up. I think there was a refrigerator involved as well, but the healing powers of time have erased it from my memory; you can read about here if you’re dumb enough:

Why does there seem to be such prejudice and snickering when the idea of an amphibious car ever arises? Maybe it’s because most of the examples produced over the years have been a bit unwieldy neither fish-nor-fowl (sorry for the pun) like the DUKW “Ducks” from World War II that are nonetheless still in use at some vacation resorts across the country (most famously for me the ones in the Wisconsin Dells):

As far as traditional cars, the only one that came close to being a “mass market” proposition was the German Amphicar. This Triumph Herald-powered amphibian might have been a poor performer but it did indeed delivery on it’s dual use promise. Too bad it wasn’t fiberglass since rust claimed many examples; you can drive a car with rust holes in it but a rusty boat? Not so much.

We often hear people saying that any amphibious machine will be a “spork” like combination, meaning it will be a compromise object where the elements needed for it to function well as a car will adversely affect its ability to be a boat, and vice versa. Admittedly, that could be old-school thinking; it’s 2024 and we have things like crossovers that combine cars and off-roaders in a way we were told years back was impossible. The mindset that any amphibious car would be like an Amphicar is the same mindset that thinks an electric car is still a Ford Fairmont full of lead acid batteries that go about 30 miles after a 36-hour charge.

There have been more recent attempts at amphibious vehicles that never got very far, likely because of this old-school thinking. Some ideas were produced by smaller firms, such as one that uses a Suzuki Jimny as the mechanicals (the Dutton company), but others were conceptual products of big automakers (Isuzu):

These next-generation amphibians solved some of the initial problems of the old-school poster vehicles of the idea. Besides, what if you don’t care if your amphibious ride is a spectacular car or a Donzi-competitive boat rolled into one? You just want both in one machine. How can we make more people see why that’s not a bad idea?

Don’t Do It, Dad

Prejudices are typically taught; you’re not born with them. Parents might tell their kids that other cultures are “bad” (if they’re bigoted losers) or don’t work hard enough (if they’re racist jerks), or they tell children that certain cars are “cool” and others are overrated crap (if they’re, well, me with my kids). The idea of a car that can turn into a boat is still mocked and seen with great skepticism, but what if children didn’t grow up seeing it that way?

The other day, my kid sent me a picture from Super Everything Store of an item he saw on the shelves:

The object floating in the pool looks very much like a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, a toy that by 1991 had become the undisputed world’s best-selling car with over 500,000 units moved in that year alone. For those under the age of forty, many have put some serious miles on one of these as a first vehicle. Supposedly there’s another version of the floating Cozy Coupe more complex than the one my kid sent the picture of that a parent could control by a remote to pilot the baby all over the pool (or the remote mounts to the dash for the child to drive themselves).

I texted my kid back to ask if this was an amphibious toy, and he responded that it was just an inflatable thing for a baby to take into the pool that happens to look like a Cozy Coupe. There was a slight pause, followed by the expected text from an eleven-year-old cursed with a dad like me: “I know what you’re thinking. DO NOT draw an amphibious Cozy Coupe, that would be stupid, kids will drown.” Naturally, I was already drawing it.

I mean, why not an AquaCoupe? I see a lot of reasons why it would be a great idea, one of which is the same one that Jason brought up about real cars and boats. Why have a big ride-around toy and some leaky inflatable thing cluttering up the house when you can have both in one?

How can it float? That’s really the easy part; there are floating motorhomes out there that simply have inflatable ballasts on the sides (like my Star Trek tribute), so one would expect that filling the lower parts of the Cozy Coupe with Styrofoam or things you could blow up would do the same thing. The Cozy Coupe famously has a big hole in the floor since designers realized that most kids don’t use pedals and instead want to mosey around Flintstones-style with their feet. Consequently, there’s no need to seal the one opening door on the side; plus the kid could do little kicking motions to move the thing around.

By the way, Cozy Coupes offer a removable floor for younger children that we could use here as well, though it wouldn’t be designed to stop water from getting in (or need to in order for the thing to keep floating). I do think that Styrofoam in the upper sections would be good as well; if the thing ends up turning over will still remain buoyant (by the way, the version in the pics below is one that Torch will take great issue with since the headlights are not the eyes and they damn well should be).

Another thing I’ve seen recently is many kiddie pools are moving towards “zero depth” entry, or a beach-like perimeter where kids can easily walk in. That’s ideal for doing the amphibious car trick of causing people to lose their shit thinking you’re going to submerge your car and then just safely float away.

The Dream Goes To Sink

Sure, this thing has lawsuits written all over it; regardless of if I cover the thing in warning notices I wouldn’t doubt that accidents could occur that the personal injury lawyer mentioned in the billboard above would have a field day with.

That’s a shame, since I think any kid would love one of these things – I know that I would. It’s also too bad that the AquaCoupe didn’t come out closer to the time of the Cozy Coupe’s introduction in 1979, a time when we played with cast-iron lawn darts that could penetrate your skull, cooled off with Water Wiggle (the summer-fun toy that could strangle you), ate Pop Rocks with carbonated soda, and our parents just gave no shits. Something like the Aquacoupe would make us think that the 1976 Esprit in The Spy Who Loved Me could be a real thing (we were too young to watch it, but had the toy).

If we had amphibious toys growing up, mark my words: GenXers and Millennials would be demanding amphibious cars from every manufacturer, and getting them.

How Have I Not Known That There’s A French Company Making Amphibious Boats With Caterpillar Treads – The Autopian

Finally, The Galileo Shuttlecraft Amphibious Camper You’ve Waited Years For – The Autopian

Our Daydreaming Designer Re-Imagines Vector If They Made Amphibious Supercars – The Autopian

The Entire Dutton Amphibious Car Company Is Up For Sale And You Could Buy It – The Autopian