Scuba Diving club,
Southern California
Bond's
ride? New sports car doubles as boat
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LONDON (AP) -- Britain's
newest sports car took a test drive Wednesday, zooming back and forth across
the waters of the Thames River in pure James Bond style.
The Aquada can hit speeds of
100 miles an hour on land -- and once it hits water, the wheels retract into
the wheel arch, jets kick in, and the car is suddenly a boat.
Once waterborne it can reach
speeds of 30 miles per hour, according to Gibbs Technologies, the British firm
that designed it.
Sticker shock
With a sticker price of
about $235,000, the convertible has no doors in order to avoid leaks. Drivers
and passengers must jump over the side to get into the car -- just like a boat.
"With this you can have
a really good car on the road, and an exciting toy that can tow a water skier,
that you can commute to work with, that you can go to St. Tropez with and take
two girlfriends," the firm's chairman Alan Gibbs told reporters at the
car's test drive on London's Thames on Wednesday.
The car is part of the
Aquada Bond series, but the company couldn't say whether that is a veiled
reference to James Bond and the sports-car-cum-submarine that the superspy
operated in the movie "The Spy Who Loved Me."
Daunting requirements
The vehicle can switch to
cruising on water within seconds, and the drive mechanism switches to power a
jet that propels the vehicle, according to the company.
"The design
requirements for the Aquada were daunting, but the technology has delivered and
demonstrates the quality of British engineering," said Gibbs, a New
Zealand entrepreneur who built his first fast amphibian vehicle in 1995, before
moving his company to Britain in 1999. He said the Aquada was the product of a
seven-year development program and 60 newly patented technologies.
One hundred of the cars are being built and will sell at the end of this year.
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Posted September 7, 2003