Gibbs: The Men Who Decided to Drive on Water
Every now and then, a company comes along that looks at the established rules of motoring and decides, with a cheerful sort of madness, to ignore them completely. Gibbs is one of those companies. It’s not a car company in the traditional sense. It’s a group of deeply clever and slightly unhinged engineers, founded by a wealthy New Zealander, who became utterly obsessed with solving a problem that almost no one else was trying to solve: how to make a car that’s also a proper, fast boat. Not a slow, wallowing amphibious curiosity, but a genuine, high-speed machine that works brilliantly on both land and sea. It’s a fantastically difficult and almost entirely pointless challenge, which is, of course, what makes it so magnificent.
The man behind this obsession is Alan Gibbs, an entrepreneur from New Zealand who made a fortune in everything from television to car parts. Having conquered the world of business, he decided to spend his money on a proper challenge. He reasoned that for a hundred years, every amphibious vehicle had been a rubbish car and an even more rubbish boat. He didn't want a compromise; he wanted a vehicle that could do 100 mph on the road and, with the push of a button, retract its wheels and do 30 mph on the water.
The Aquada: A Sports Car in a Wetsuit
After years of secret development and burning through a colossal pile of cash, his company unveiled its masterpiece in 2003: the Gibbs Aquada. It was a sleek, three-seater open-top sports car that looked like a slightly strange Mazda MX-5. It was powered by a V6 engine and, on the road, it was a perfectly capable, if quirky, machine. But that wasn't the point. The point was what happened when you drove it down a slipway into a river.
At the touch of a button, the wheels would retract up into the arches, a jet drive would engage, and in about twelve seconds, the Aquada would transform from a car into a speedboat. This wasn't some slow, chugging affair. It was properly quick on the water, capable of pulling a water-skier. The engineering required to achieve this was mind-bending. It involved dozens of patents, a hugely complex hydraulic system, and a hull design that somehow had to work with four big holes in it for the wheels.
The Channel Crossing and a Missed Opportunity
To prove that the Aquada was more than just a rich man's toy, Richard Branson used one in 2004 to set a new record for crossing the English Channel in an amphibious vehicle. He did it in just one hour and forty minutes, smashing the old record. It was a brilliant publicity stunt that showcased the car's incredible capabilities. The world was impressed. Here was a car that could genuinely take you from London to Paris, driving to the coast, across the sea, and then up the beach on the other side.
The company planned to sell the Aquada as the ultimate toy for the super-rich. But the project hit a fatal snag. The huge American market, where it was expected to be a massive hit, was effectively closed off to them. The US road safety regulations and the marine safety regulations were so contradictory that it was impossible for one vehicle to meet both. The Aquada, for all its genius, was a commercial dead end.
Quadskis and Other Mad Ideas
Undeterred by the failure of the Aquada to become a sales hit, Gibbs simply channelled its engineering obsession into other, equally mad amphibious vehicles. If a three-seater sports car was too niche, what about an amphibious quad bike? The result was the Quadski, a machine that could tear up a muddy track and then instantly transform into a jet ski. It was a brilliant, ridiculous, and fantastically fun solution to another problem nobody actually had.
This was followed by the Humdinga, a giant, amphibious 4x4, and the Phibian, an enormous amphibious truck. Gibbs had cornered the market in high-speed amphibious technology. They became the world's leading experts in a field that most of the mainstream motor industry was too sensible to even think about.
The Dream That Refuses to Die
Gibbs is not a company you will see in your local high street. Their products are sold to a tiny number of very wealthy individuals, emergency services, and military clients who have a genuine need to drive into a lake without stopping. It has never become a mass-market manufacturer, and it has probably spent far more money on research and development than it has ever made back in sales.
But that was never really the point. The story of Gibbs is a glorious testament to the power of a single, obsessive idea. It's a story of relentless problem-solving and brilliant, out-of-the-box engineering. They took a concept that had been a joke for a century - the amphibious car - and, through sheer force of will and a mountain of cash, they made it work. And for that, they deserve a place high on the list of Britain's most gloriously eccentric and wonderful automotive innovators.