The Amphi-Car may be one of the oddest things you will see at Walt Disney World.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
Amphi-Car at Disney Springs
When Walt Disney World was being planned in the late 1960s, it was done entirely in secret. Land was bought in large chunks through dummy companies that had been set up by Disney, and the Florida Legislature also passed a law creating a special entity called the “Reedy Creek Improvement District”, which was given all the authority of a county government to elect officials and to tax its residents for community services like fire and utilities. The whole thing was owned by Disney. It was, essentially, a “company county”.
The original plans called for all of Disney World’s employees to live inside the Reedy Creek District, but that didn’t work out—there were just too many of them. So instead, Disney fit as many as they could.
Work had already begun on a shopping district, called Lake Buena Vista Village, to provide for all the employees who would live on Disney property. But in 1977, as the number of residences in Reedy Creek continued to be cut, the plan changed: now, the shopping district would be remodeled as a destination for the guests at Disney parks and hotels. It was renamed Walt Disney World Village.
A few years later, the area was expanded again. After the theme parks closed at the end of the night, many of the tourists were heading to downtown Orlando’s bars and clubs for a bit of nightlife. Disney saw this as a missed opportunity, and so, as part of their overall strategy of keeping people on Disney property throughout their entire vacation, the company responded with nightclubs of its own, located next to the Village and called “Pleasure Island”. Each club featured a different musical genre from rock to country, there were two comedy clubs, and “New Year’s Eve” was celebrated every night at midnight. Pleasure Island opened in 1989.
Meanwhile, the Disney Village got another remodel and another name change—now it was Disney Village Marketplace, and later it was renamed again as Downtown Disney. By 2004, however, Pleasure Island was beginning to cause the sort of problems and difficulties that one would expect from a crowd of drunken young people, and Disney decided to drop the idea. Pleasure Island danced its last dance in 2008. Two years later, Disney announced yet another major remodel. Now, Downtown Disney would be expanded to include the former Pleasure Island area, adding attractions such as Cirque du Soleil, The LEGO Store, Rainforest Café, House of Blues, and a string of other high-end shops and restaurants. It was renamed “Disney Springs”.
One of the more unusual attractions at Disney Springs is the Amphi-Car—a car that drives in water like a boat.
In 1940, Hans Tippel was an automobile engineer who worked for the Mercedes company in Germany. He was also an active supporter of Adolf Hitler and a member of the SA Stormtroopers. So when the Nazis overran France, Tippel was rewarded by being granted management over the Bugatti plant at Molsheim, in occupied France.
Above all, Tippel was a tinkerer who liked to play with unusual ideas. Before the war, he had experimented by strapping an outboard powerboat engine onto the back of his car, which allowed him to motor around the lake near his house.
Now, in Mosheim, Tippel recalled his makeshift automobile-boat and took up the concept again, figuring it might be useful for transporting troops or supplies. After some more tinkering, he came up with a prototype based on the body from a standard Wehrmacht Kubelwagen armored car, that he called the Schwimmwagen. Hitler liked the idea and ordered production. Around 17,000 of them were made during the war.
After the Allied victory in 1945, Tippel found himself in jail, locked up by the French as a “war profiteer”. When he got out in 1949, he resurrected his idea of an amphibious automobile, and during the 1950s he sold the concept to a company in Norway. Known as the Troll, the car-boat was intended to allow Norwegians to easily cross deep fjords and marshy areas where there were no roads. But only five Trolls were ever sold. Partly this was because the aquatic car just wasn’t very practical (and with its plastic body it also wasn’t very well-made), and partly it was because few people in Norway wanted to buy a car made by a former Nazi.
Tippel went back to the drawing board. By 1960, he had come up with a design he called the Amphi-Car. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary convertible, with perhaps an oddly-sloping lower body. Under the hood was a British-made Triumph 1147cc 4-cylinder engine with a four-speed manual-shift transmission—the same one used in the popular Spitfire sports car. Tippel chose this engine because it was lightweight and readily available.
The oddity of the Amphi-Car, however, is revealed when you look at the rear bumper, and see two nylon-plastic propellers. You drive the Amphi-Car straight into the water. Then, by shifting the car transmission into neutral and popping a lever, the engine engages the boat transmission which turns the propellers, transforming your car into a boat. The front wheels act as rudders, allowing you to steer with the wheel. By running the propellers to top speed and emerging from the water, you can put the transmission into first gear and drive away.
Some might say it was an idea that was far ahead of its time. Others might say that it was just a dumb idea to begin with. But Tippel managed to talk the Quandt Group in Germany into producing Amphi-Cars. Estimating they could sell 25,000 units in the first year alone, Quandt built a production factory in Stuttgart and another in Berlin. Because the aquatic car could do up to 7 knots as a boat and 70mph as a car, it was dubbed the Model 770.
There was a huge marketing campaign, touting the “Sports Car That Swims”. A series of publicity stunts saw Amphi-Cars chugging across the Yukon River in Canada, Sydney Harbor in Australia, and the English Channel. The car-boat appeared in TV shows and movies, including the popular British show “The Avengers”. It is rumored that there was even talk of putting James Bond into an Amphi-Car.
One owner was President Lyndon Johnson, who would often take guests out for a spin at his Texas ranch and then drive downhill into the lake, yelling that his brakes were out. Presumably he had to clean the passenger seat afterwards.
But in the end, Tippel was in for a big disappointment. The door seals often leaked, and the included bilge pump (the anchor was optional) was often unable to keep up. The auto body was made from steel, and “steel” doesn’t hold up very well in salt water: it quickly rusted out. The British engine was not all that reliable. After every aquatic run, the vehicle frame required servicing which included a dozen grease points—one of which was behind the seats. Then in 1968 the US Government set new safety and emissions standards for all cars sold in the United States, which the Amphi-Car could not meet.
By 1963, Quandt shut down its production lines, and began selling vehicles that were assembled from the pile of parts it had already made. They sold leftover cars until 1968, titling them as whatever year it was that they were purchased. In total, only 3,878 Amphi-Cars were sold, most of them in the US. The list price back then was around $3,000: today, they are much-sought by collectors and can sell for over $75,000.
When Disney revamped its “Disney Springs” in 2015, somebody came up with the idea to revive the Amphi-Car as an attraction for the tourists. Four vintage Model 770s were bought, refurbished, and each of them painted one of the four original factory colors—Beach White, Regatta Red, Lagoon Blue, and Fjord Green. The Boathouse Restaurant, a high-end seafood eatery on the shore of one of Disney’s artificial lakes, installed a concrete ramp and a turntable for aligning the Amphi-Cars on the dock. Each car has a “Captain”, who drives visitors into the water on a narrated tour around the lake.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)
