Only An Idiot Would Let The ‘The World’s Worst Car’ Live On Through The Seventies, And I’m That Idiot

“You can’t turn a pig into a gazelle, but you can make an awfully fast pig.” In the automotive world, that old adage has been proven true many times over. Your Aunt Cassie’s Buick Regal or a tenured professor’s Volvo 240 will never truly rival a BMW, but transformed into a black Grand National coupe or a GLT “Turbo Brick” wagon they can certainly show taillights to more than a few Roundel-badged cars. You can improve virtually anything with wheels.

Recently we’ve tried to use this swine-to-speedster method to dispel another common belief that “any amphibious car will be unmitigated shit.” These car-boats are often vehicles that are less than spectacular at the tasks of a road vehicle while at the same time having poor capabilities of boats; that’s understood. Even if you could build a machine that was any good at both, it would typically cost as much as the average four-bedroom American home.

Still, accepting that you aren’t going to have a Cigarette-level power boat that turns into an Aventador doesn’t mean you can’t have something amphibious that’s a fun, affordable compromise. We looked at taking the “faster pig” approach with an infamous car/boat a few weeks back, and now we’ll take it to the next level.

Amphi II: The Amphi Strikes Back

For the last few weeks, Jason has been attempting to redeem the entries in Craig Cheetham’s tome of alleged terribleness, The World’s Worst Cars. He’s taken umbrage at most of these entries and slowly been defending them one by one, but the car on the cover of the book is one I’ve personally taken on: the Amphicar.

With nearly 4000 examples sold, the Amphicar was easily the best-selling consumer amphibious car ever made. Slow as a car and slow as a boat, it was also rather dorky looking to boot, living up to the common belief about amphibious cars and earning it a place in Cheetham’s book.  Still, if you wanted a car to get to work or the store on land and just hang out on the water every few weekends or so in summer it did exactly that. What’s so bad about it then?

Nothing’s wrong with that, at least nothing that can’t be fixed. I looked at Volkswagen taking over the Amphicar works and making changes to improve this relatively popular offering (I mean, popular for an amphibious car). For my 1967 redesign, I started with new styling that looked more boat-like and removed the silly tailfins. Next, a far more powerful flat-four motor from the ill-fated EA266 was put in the middle of the car for better weight distribution and larger VW wheels helped with road drivability and to act as rudders in the water.

The more appealing looks and far better performance would almost certainly have helped increase the sales of the Amphicar. As I mentioned in my post, the total Amphicar sales were equal the sales of all Porsche 911 models sold in 1967, so the first Amphicar might have been a niche player but like that sports car that niche likely would have expanded.

My changes would have made the Amphicar far better on the road where it would have spent ninety-five percent of its life, but many commenters mentioned that it still would have been a major dud off of the shore. A bigger challenge might have been the looming American safety regulations including the dreaded 5MPH safety bumpers, something that neither the original Amphicar nor my reimagining would have passed.

Let’s bite the bullet and design the third-generation Amphicar to answer these critics and face the changing times.

What Would Have Floated The Public’s Boat?

Small production-run cars are a great way to test new mechanical systems, and in our alternate reality, the water-cooled flat-four from the EA266 project could have been tried out in the Amphicar before becoming a mainstream Beetle replacement powerplant.

True to expectations, in my alternate reality the EA266 motor would have proved expensive to build and maintain, clearing the way for the front-drive Golf/Rabbit to debut in 1974 and putting paid to the whole mid-engined EA266 program based on the results of the second generation Amphicar motor.

Would that have meant the end of the Amphicar? Absolutely not. By 1974 we’d have been ready for a third-generation car/boat anyway, and a certain real-world low-volume manufacturer of amphibious cars offers a great inspiration for our next Amphicar. A British kit car company called Dutton that was up for sale a little while back (the whole company!) made a series of car-boats including a Suzuki Jimny (Samurai) based off-roader called the Dutton Surf and a sporty one called the Dutton Reef.

Available as a kit or fully assembled product, the Dutton Reef used gutted stock Ford Fiesta components to make a mid-engined amphibian that even managed to provide small rear seats, a feat most car companies seem unable to achieve with land-based midship sports cars.

On-road performance of this Fiero-like machine was not spectacular, but it was more than able to keep up with traffic on the highway. As a boat, the Reef is what’s called a “full-displacement design” which in this case means you’re limited to a hull speed of around 6mph. Unlike speedier boats that can “break over the hump” and run “on plane” to lift the bow so only a small amount of the hull is actually in the water, the Reef’s hull remains fully dunked at any speed.

That’s just like the Amphicar (the real one and my redesign), and those limitations as a watercraft met some resistance from a few commenters in my last post as being “slow, shit boating.” Amphibious cars capable of “planing” have indeed been offered, such as the Gibbs Aquada that I showcased in the previous article. The Aquada featured a sophisticated wheel retraction which cut drag in the water to allow it to allegedly reach speeds of up the 30MPH in the water.

Why not do that with an Amphicar? Two reasons: cost and weight. A non-planing 6mph-on-the-water Dutton Reef was reportedly available as a kit (without the Fiesta donor) for under $18,000; a fully assembled car could have been bought for around $30,000. On the other hand, the high-performance Gibbs Aquada with the complex wheel retraction (but no opening doors) was pushing $300,000 before the whole venture went bust.

The sales numbers speak for themselves; Gibbs sold only about 45 cars (they were projecting 4000 units) while the little Dutton firm moved over 260 units of different amphibious cars, or around six times the number of Aquadas (by the way, the Dutton company was bought by Polish firm so hopefully we’ll see production happening again sometime soon). Jason Torchinsky’s belief that a lot of people just want to putter around on a lake and not have to deal with a tow car, a trailer, and place to store a boat is proven by the fact that the silly old Amphicar did sell the nearly 4000 units that Gibbs targeted but couldn’t come close to producing 1/100th of that.

If a tiny UK firm can do this you have to believe that a brand now backed up by VW couldn’t do this, right? I mean, in Volkswagen Group tradition it would be far more complex than a Dutton, break down, and cost thousands to fix ten years later, but they could make it happen.

Amphi III- The Return Of The Amphi

In a manner similar to a Fiero and the Dutton Reef, the third-gen Amphicar would take the whole Golf/Rabbit powertrain and move it to the rear axle of the car; the radiator would mount at the back of the car with air intakes above. This would allow us to shape the front end as needed to make it better as a boat, and to eliminate any needed openings at the front of this new Amphicar. Instead of dual propellors, there will be a single jet boat-like propulsion unit below the bumper that can turn with the steering wheel to make the Amphicar III turn much more responsively in the water than the earlier ones.

In 1974, styling trends would have evolved to far more angular lines, and I don’t see why this now-Volkswagen subsidiary wouldn’t have used the same design firm that they had entrusted with their bread-and-butter cars: Giugiaro’s Ital Design. The Gen III Amphicar would take on the popular-at-the-time wedge profile that would be very similar to the new-for-1974 Mk1 Scirocco. I know that the Karmann-Ghia has a lot of fans but I think this Golf-based sports coupe is one of the best-looking Volkswagen ever made.

Remember also that in the early seventies all manufacturers were convinced that, in addition to 5MPH bumpers, the US Department of Transportation was going to institute federal rollover standards for cars. This very real fear caused essentially all convertibles to disappear by 1976, and you’d think that VW would want to find a new solution for the Amphicar.

The answer I have in mind is the same one used by most American manufacturers: the T-bar or Targa removable roof panels. Front and rear frameless and pillarless side glass would fully roll down and the individual fiberglass roof panels could lift off and store under the hood over cargo in the frunk. The end result is very Scirocco-like and would fit right in with the VW/Audi family aesthetics of their early FWD cars. The black rubber surrounding trim on the VWs would be moved higher and made thicker for the Amphicar to protect you in docking situations.

Clear covers over the headlamps also extend to a transparent cover for the license plate in a manner similar to a Citroen SM, with the plate accessible from the frunk. Smooth wheel covers will help aerodynamics on the road, lower water resistance in the water and to allow the front wheels to act better as front rudders to help with steering in boat mode. The sail panels in back could feature vents, but I’d rather keep the lower ones as fake so that the sail panels might act as a way to keep water from splashing into the engine bay vents behind the rear window (which, supposedly, was part of the purposed of the absurd-looking tailfins on the first Amphicar).

Supposedly most of the original Amphicars were sold in America, so what will VW do about the dreaded NHTSA regulations? Well, I’m not gonna lie to you: it won’t be ideal. The 5MPH bumpers will literally have to hang off the front and back of the car, though we can smooth them out enough that they might pass off as “water diverters” or something (no, they won’t, but rules are rules). The composite Euro headlamps and covered license plate in front will give way to retractable units and black plastic trim to at least give a reasonable approximation of the better-looking non-federalized nose. Both Euro and US cars feature red and green navigation lights located behind the rear-view mirror and visible in the top of the windshield, as well as a retractable white light on the roof bar.

Would This Make You A Back Seat Driver?

The interior of the Amphicar III is a 2+2 affair, but it would be great to be able to offer on-the-water fun for more people (“Hey good looking, we’ll be back to pick you up later!”) No problem: Amphicar III has you covered.

How many readers here grew up with VW Type 3s and 4s? Remember as kids looking in at the open, empty trunk and saying “Damn, I could sit on that ledge between the wheels”? You tried it out before Dad said to get the hell out of the trunk, right? Well, fortysomething years later we’re making that silliness a reality.

The hood of the Amphicar could be removed with quick releases and replaced with a temporary vinyl tonneau cover. Under this cover would be some seat cushions so that, in a manner similar to bowrider boats, would let passengers sit up in the “bow” ahead of the driver. Why squeeze into the tiny rear seat when you could sit up front? That also lets the driver and passenger fully recline seats to get sun in the days before we worried about skin cancer.

Yes, you could in fact ride up in da frunk when the Amphicar is used as a road car, but the owner’s manual and local regulations would strongly advise you not to. Once you’re done with the boating season just put the hood back in place to replace the tonneau.

As an option, you could get a rack to carry the roof panels over the engine instead of in the frunk (allowing room for air to get to the motor) which would also give you a “poop deck.”  Yes, that’s what it’s called in the boating world, and it would give the ability for you to sunbathe at the back of the car or just sit (though that dude I put back there does appear to doing what the name of the deck implies).

Where the party at?!? It might only top out at 6MPH on the water, but the Amphicar III would have been all about on-the-water fun.

Domed-Out Dash

I was about to put a very conservative German Golf/Scirocco dash in this thing but I ended up going off the rails as I often do. Because the Amphicar can be a boat, I put a dome-topped nautical compass in the center of the instrument panel, and it looked very out of place with the car instruments.

Did I make the compass look more like an automotive gauge? No, that’s too easy; I did the opposite and changed all of the instruments to dome shapes. I really don’t know why. Now they all look like the nautical gauge, or to my eye like a Pop-O-Matic dice flipper. Imagine how these glowing domes would have looked like sticking out of your dash at night. Yes, a rotating dome clock would likely have been tough to read.

Third Time’s The Charm?

Like the original, the Amphicar III would remain a niche product, but a niche that possibly would have expanded during the malaise era when gas was scarce, interest rates were high, and the prospect of owning a boat and a car would have been too crippling for some. Most cars were slow back then, so shouldn’t they have made a car that’s enjoyable in ways that don’t involve pure speed? I mean, that’s how custom vans became popular then, but I’m talking more, you know, wholesome fun than what those dens of iniquity provided.

With VW behind it, one could see Ferdinand Piech getting involved in the Amphicar development just because he could. An amphibious car isn’t any sillier than Piech’s idea of a car that could go 186MPH all day in 120 degree weather while keeping the cabin a 72 degrees, which nobody bought. Well, almost nobody.

In a time when people put bubble windows on crappy Pinto wagons and giant “Le Car” stickers on little hatchbacks at the factory, wouldn’t a less-than-perfect car/boat have fit right in?

Let’s Give The Cover Star Of The ‘Worst Cars’ Book The Makeover It Deserves – The Autopian

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

The Entire Dutton Amphibious Car Company Is Up For Sale And You Could Buy It – The Autopian (dev-jazelc.com)

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