Amphibious Cars

note: click on the image for the source

Wouldn’t it be nice to own a vehicle that travel on land and water? They are called amphibious cars meant to travel both on land and water just like an amphibian. But do not confuse them on classic landing craft because they are usually not considered amphibious vehicles rather they are merely an attempt to create vehicles that can travel on both surfaces. Because more and more people are getting into the craze of creating vehicles using highly efficient technological skills, they starts to desire to expand the off-road capabilities of land-vehicles into a whole new "all-terrain" capability. They are not only trying to make vehicles that can transport on land and water, but including other factors such as ice, mud, marsh, snow, swamp, and many more.

What I read before is that almost all land vehicles are potential candidate to be made into amphibious kind by merely mounting waterproof hull and a propeller. If the vehicle volume is larger than its displacement then it will result to floating. However, for those heavily created vehicles, they call for additional buoyancy measures in order to float.

One of the earliest known amphibious vehicles was created by Neapolitan Prince Raimondo di Sangro of Sansevero. However, the first self-propelled amphibious vehicle known in history is the Orukter Amphibolos, which is basically a steam-powered wheeled dredging barge, created in United States. Records show that it was designed by Oliver Evans in 1805. However, there was a lot of controversy that this vehicle had potentially traveled over land or water under its own steam. The record for proof is vague so people cannot really prove this claim.

I wonder if I can own this kind of vehicle someday. Lets see.