By David Menzies
With the arrival of summer and in honour of that beloved bittersweet beverage, lemonade, from now until fall, we shall present a look back at some of the most memorable lemons of yesteryear on a weekly basis. We're talking design disasters, marketing misfits, engineering errors and aesthetic abominations. In short, a car owner's nightmare but a technician's dream come true.
This week, a vehicle only Aquaman would pine for: the Amphicar.
Is it just me, or is the Amphicar (a half car/half boat contraption) a dead-ringer for the vehicles driven along the byways of Bikini Bottom, the fictional underwater urban metropolis that is home to Spongebob Squarepants?
Alas, the Amphicar turned out to be a bit of a cartoon comedy, too - albeit the Amphicar's humour was unintentionally funny.
Indeed, everything about the Amphicar - a vehicle that could be driven on the road and or piloted across a body of water - was a tad inexplicable. For starters, just consider the Amphicar's place of origin, Germany - a country that has precious little coastline.
Secondly, one must question the ostensible need for manufacturing such a dual-purpose vehicle in the first place. Yes, it's an engineering wonder. But has there ever been pent-up demand for such a vessel? Granted, an Amphicar might be handy for a resident of New Orleans whenever a Katrina-like hurricane blows in for an unwelcome visit. But if one is simply into boating as a hobby, how's this for a concept: buy a boat.
Design-wise, one would think that any car that's meant to spend prolonged periods submerged in water would be properly rust-proofed and undercoated. The Amphicar wasn't. Can you possibly guess what went wrong? Alas, many an Amphicar sprung a leak and sank when corrosion took lease.
Even when it stayed buoyant, it wasn't unusual for an Amphicar to sputter to a halt once water got into its engine, forcing a mechanical seizure.
As you'd imagine, making a vehicle that would do double-duty as both a car and a boat meant several "compromises" had to be made. Translation: the Amphicar wasn't exactly the Bluenose when it came to sailing the ocean blue nor was it a speedster at the track. (In 1967, Car and Driver clocked the Amphicar's 0 to 60 mph time at a less-than-scintillating 43 seconds.)
Today, the Amphicar lives on as a head-turning curiosity - and a cautionary tale for anyone still obsessed with the notion of a flying car.

Edited: 08/05/2010 at 10:18 AM by CTAdmin