According to Wikipedia, the source of all that is dubious, doubtful and wildly inaccurate, Kiwi tycoon Alan Gibbs started messing around with amphibious vehicles after he became “frustrated by the extreme tidal nature of the Kaipara Harbour, that forms the western boundary of his farm”. Which leads one to assume he wanted to develop a vehicle that could get stuck in mud in both its land-going and water-born forms.
Whatever his intentions, he succeeded in creating the very cool Aquada amphibious sports car.
From there the company he set up around it has created several more amphibious vehicles, just without the cool name. The Humdinga and Phibian are large “Amphitrucks” that are silly in name, but awesome in practice. The recently-released Quadski is a welcome return to a decent name, as well as being a thoroughly excellent combination of a quad bike and a jetski, and let’s face it – we ALL need one of those. Well, I sure do…
But now it seems that we are going to see poorly-named Humdinga in action more often, as Gibbs has licensed the Amphitruck to Singapore Technologies Kinetics Ltd.
The 12-year agreement between Gibbs and ST Kinetics includes non-exclusive production and sales rights for the Humdinga.
Gibbs Chairman Neil Jenkins said the company’s partnership with ST Kinetics was the first of several licensing agreements for Amphitruck products and technology that Gibbs plans to sign in the next several years.
The Gibbs Humdinga is expected to strengthen ST Kinetics’ current offering of first-responder vehicles, including the ExtremV – an all-terrain vehicle designed for emergency rescues, medical evacuations and the transport of emergency supplies and personnel.
An ST Kinetics spokesperson in Singapore said Humdinga’s ability to operate on both land and water will be especially useful in mitigating the devastating impact of tsunamis and other flood-related disasters.
“This new partnership represents a significant step forward for the future of transportation, as well as for Gibbs and ST Kinetics,” said Jenkins. “We’ve spent more than 15 years and $200 million to create an entirely new form of transportation, removing the age-old boundaries between land and water.
“ST Kinetics has recognised the significance of this breakthrough technology and they’re poised to capitalise on the opportunity.”
While we at OVERSTEER are still holding out for flying cars, we have to admit this is a very cool toy seriously good rescue vehicle.
