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Gibbs Terraquad Amphibious Vehicle Turns Water into Asphalt... Sort of

Flying cars are still a thing of the future, even though some pretty serious advancements have been made lately, but surely cars that can drive on water are a lot more feasible, right? Well, wrong.
Gibbs Terraquad 6 photos
Photo: Gibbs Sports Amphibians
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You could say humankind knows a lot about both land and water vehicles, so mixing the two shouldn’t pose that great of a challenge. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they first may seem with the switch from road-going to water-slicing raising up some technical issues.

First of all, the vehicle would have to use two different propulsion systems, one to turn the wheels, the other to offer propulsion once the vehicle gets wet. This adds weight and also requires large amounts of space in a vehicle that also has other things to worry about like ground clearance and hydrodynamic shape.

Gibbs Sports Amphibians, as the name suggests, specializes in precisely this kind of vehicles. We used the plural for "vehicles" when instead we should have used the singular form of the noun, as currently Gibbs is only selling one product in two forms. It’s called the Quadski, and it’s basically a jet ski with four deployable wheels that help it get out of the water on its own and continue the journey home on tarmac roads.

The Quadski is powered by a 1.3-liter four-cylinder BMW bike-engine that gives it 140 hp (on water) and a 45 mph (72 km/h) speed limit over both land and water. Besides its obvious uses as a recreational vehicle, the Gibbs Quadski is also employed by law enforcement forces, being extremely useful in marshy areas or for patrolling river borders.

The Quadski comes in two flavors

There's the regular one and the XL version, which offers two tandem seats just like a motorcycle does. However, Gibbs also has a number of concepts waiting to make it into production, and they all look quite promising.

First off is the Biski - you guessed it, that’s an amphibious motorcycle that looks quite strange to say the least. Then there’s the Triski - yes, it is an amphibious three-wheeler with a sporty look and specs similar to those of the Quadski.

Finally, Gibbs Sports Amphibians has just released the Terraquad, the first of their vehicles to offer side-by-side seating for two and, thus, more of a car-like experience. Technical details are roughly the same - 45 mph (72 km/h) on water, 50 mph (80 km/h) on land, and a transition time from land to water vehicle (and the other way around) of less than five seconds.

The Terraquad also has a flatbed behind the two occupants for your waterproof luggage and comes with a set of rollbars for protection in case you topple the thing over. Looking at those small wheels and tall metallic structure, you’d think that won’t be very hard to do, but the truth is the Terraquad seems to handle quite decently and should offer delicious amounts of fun.

So, the vehicles to solve our amphibious problems are here, but they have tiny wheels and weird looking bodies, and most of them are concepts. It doesn’t matter, we’d still have one. Even Jeremy Clarkson (video below) had a go on a Quadski and came out smiling, and we all know what a pretentious douche he is most of the times.

Here is the thing in action, and further down you'll find the TopGear piece where Clarkson drives the Quadski.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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