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HERE'S THE ULTIMATE OFF-ROAD VEHICLE |
Amphicar gives new meaning to `cruise'
STAFF WRITER
08-Jan-2000 Saturday
Pat Sullivan | Amphicar
There is nothing like a little drive on the lake to calm nerves jangled by
a stressful job.
On a recent Sunday, Dr. Pat Sullivan, an anesthesiologist at Grossmont
Hospital, gunned his little car down the launch ramp and right into the
lapping waters of Lake Murray.
Two dozen onlookers rushed for a better view. One man grabbed his camera
and started clicking.
And, to everyone's amazement, the car floated.
Sullivan enjoys all the gawking and questions that his 35-year-old
Amphicar, an amphibious vehicle, evoke.
"My daddy said you went in for a carwash," 6-year-old Bailey Schrader
of El
Cajon told Sullivan when, two hours later, he drove out of the water.
"I have not seen one of those in years," said David Morris, visiting
from
Mill Valley. "They're classic. There are only a handful left. I was
watching the propellers work. It's amazing.
"It's a bit of Americana lost -- and found."
But for Sullivan, 35, rest and relaxation come before historical interest.
"It's a high-stress environment working in labor and delivery," he
said,
"but when I come out here, I feel like I'm a million miles from the
hospital. Peace of mind is so hard to come by these days."
Sullivan also has a lot of fun scaring family, friends and colleagues
unaware that his convertible doubles as a boat. He drives them, terrified,
right into the lake.
A former girlfriend, who couldn't swim, demanded that he head back to
shore. His own father, a cast on his arm from an accident, worried how he
was going to swim to safety so impeded.
Usually, Sullivan said, everyone's immediate reaction is, "Let me out of
here!" And the first thing they all try to do is open the door to get out.
That also is the worst thing they could do.
"The only thing you can do to sink this car is to open the door when it's
in the water," Sullivan said.
Fortunately, specially sealed doors make that a bit difficult.
Tooling down the freeway at 65 mph, Sullivan's Amphicar looks like a 1950s
or '60s something-or-other.
People ask if it's an old Sunbeam Alpine or a Ford Falcon. Then they notice
the propellers mounted low, below the back bumper, between the rear
whitewalls.
"Did you make it yourself?" is a frequent question.
Watching Sullivan drive the car out of the water and up to her picnic
bench, Barbara Parnell of San Diego said she had seen a similar vehicle on
a street in Santa Monica once.
"But this is the first time I've ever seen one in the water," she
said.
"It's really pretty cool."
The Amphicar sits higher off the road than most cars, and its fins, just a
styling touch on many cars of that era, are more than decoration. They help
keep water out of the Amphicar's engine, which sits high in the trunk.
Two bilge pumps also help keep the vehicle and engine compartment dry.
Sullivan said his Amphicar is one of about eight in San Diego County and
one of an estimated 900 "seaworthy" cars left in the world, most of
them in
the United States. Owners in the area use lakes such as Hodges, Murray and
Miramar.
About 4,500 Amphicars were made in Germany between 1960 and 1968, mostly
for the American market.
The manufacturer went bankrupt, Sullivan said, when the United States
tightened its air pollution regulations to the point that the small
manufacturer could not afford the necessary retooling.
A few months later, but too late for Amphicar, the U.S. government exempted
vehicles made by small companies, Sullivan said.
When Sullivan bought his amphibious vehicle in 1997, he had visions of
moonlit sails on coastal waters.
"Every day I drive by Mission Bay in my other car (a 10-year-old Geo
Metro), I think about driving right in," he said.
But he has learned that salt water will destroy in six months what normal
wear and tear will take six years to damage. So he sticks with the county's
fresh-water lakes.
"This thing is the ultimate sports-utility vehicle," Sullivan said.
"It was
conceived as a fun vehicle."
However, he said, there are people who use the car as their primary
transportation. For instance, he added, an island dweller in Washington
state commutes to work in Seattle via roadway and waterway in his Amphicar.
Sullivan paid $15,000 for his car, which originally sold for $3,000. He
said he has spent $12,000 fixing it up.
When he started road-testing his new vehicle, Sullivan found it was best to
do so at night.
"People would hoot and holler and ask questions, and I could not get
anything done during the day," he said.
He has put in new upholstery, although it still has that '60s look. And as
discreetly as he could, he has installed a marine radio and a four-speaker
compact disc player under the dashboard.
"I wanted to maintain the original look of the car and yet have some modern
conveniences," he said.
The original AM radio still works, but it doesn't set the same mood as his
CD of the soundtrack from the hit film "Titanic."
The same manual transmission controls the engine and propellers. When the
car is driven into the water, a lever is pushed to disengage the wheels and
start the propellers.
When the car exits the water, the lever is reversed.
Amphicars' rear-mounted, 43-horsepower, four-cylinder engines are the same
as those used in Triumph Heralds, Sullivan said, and he has found British
mechanics who can work on his vehicle.
Hugh Gordon of Santa Fe Springs, who bought up all the known available
parts for the vehicles, is the guru of Amphicar enthusiasts.
Sullivan, who is single, didn't have to answer to anyone about buying the
boat-car. But another Amphicar enthusiast, John Edelstein, said he had a
hard time convincing his wife, Carol, that paying $20,000 for an old
vehicle that could go into the water was a good deal.
And, he said, he still owes her the European trip he promised her in
exchange for her acquiescence to the purchase he made about seven months
ago.
Edelstein, 39, has an anchor for his Amphicar, so he can stop in the middle
of Lake Miramar, only half a mile from his Scripps Ranch home, on a Sunday
morning and enjoy a cup of coffee, his newspaper and some peace and quiet.
"I always fantasized about owning it ever since I rode in one as a boy of 4
or 5 in New York," Edelstein said.
According to Sullivan's research, one of the cars has crossed to Santa
Catalina Island and another has taken on 14-foot waves in the English
Channel. Amphicars have driven down the Hudson and Yukon rivers and gone
across Lake Champlain to Montreal. One has conquered the Strait of
Gibraltar.
Sullivan has a videotape of the movie "Pontiac Moon," the final
scene of
which has actor Ted Danson driving his family
across a lake in an Amphicar.
"The seaworthiness of this vehicle has never been questioned,"
Sullivan
said, turning the wheel over to a reporter to try driving it into the
water.
The Amphicar is registered with the state Department of Motor Vehicles and
the Coast Guard. It meets all regulations for lights, horns and life vests
and even carries an oar, just in case.
"When you're in the middle of the lake and the car putts out, you do not
know whether to call the AAA or the Coast Guard," he said.
In fact, sometimes it's the Amphicar that comes to the rescue of the
ordinary boat. Edelstein once put a rope over his shoulder and towed a
stranded boat and its occupants to shore.
Sullivan said he especially enjoys driving out of the water and going on
his way as other boaters are hooking their craft to their cars.
"The last thing you want to do after a long day out on the lake," he
said,
"is to mess with a trailer."
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