What Couldn't You Do With This Hybrid ATV-Jet Ski?

If a Jet Ski and an all-terrain vehicle had a baby, it would be the Quadski. The amphibious vehicle, which sports a BMW engine, was originally designed for the military in 2006, but you can ride one home in November when they go on sale in the U.S. (Cue the James Bond theme.)

Having produced several amphibious combat and transport vehicles for the military, the New Zealand technology and manufacturing company Gibbs is now making the craft available to consumers. It’s the first single-person commercial High Speed Amphibious vehicle capable of hitting 45 miles per hour on land and in the water, and it costs $40,000. If it takes off, the Quadski could be the new poster child for the auto industry in Detroit, where the crafts are made.

In a demonstration video on YouTube, a driver on the four-wheel Quadski speeds across a dirt road to the shoreline and, without stopping, throttles straight into the water. The wheels retract with the push of a button and, in five seconds, the ATV transforms into a JetSki and continues on its merry way.

“You just drive straight into the water, quite fast, and keep on going. It's sort of magic,” said Alan Gibbs, the founder of Gibbs Sports Amphibians, in an interview with the Associated Press.

The Quadski is Gibbs’ latest creation. It follows the “Humdinga,” a 4-wheel-drive concept vehicle that is basically a Hummer affixed with a boat hull, and the “Aquada,” a two-person convertible that can hit 100 miles per hour on land and about 30 miles per hour in the water. Virgin owner Richard Branson set a speed record for crossing the English Channel with the Aquada back in 2004.

We haven’t seen the Aquada on sale because airbags would go off any time the vehicle hit a wave in the water, Gibbs said. The Humdinga is stalled until the company finds a partner to help take it to production. The Quadski seems just the right fit, following in the vein of ATVs, which have fewer safety standards.

“I thought the market for this sort of product is America,” Gibbs said. “They’ve got the water, they’ve got the land, they’ve got the money and the enthusiasm.”

Amphibious travel has been a rich man’s fantasy and a military pursuit for more than half a century. Ford built the first amphibious vehicle — the “Seep” or “sea jeep” — in 1942 by essentially outfitting small motor boats with jeep components. Although the military deployed them in Europe and the Pacific during World War II, they were cumbersome in the water and discontinued in the U.S. (The leftovers were leased to the Soviets, who pursued the vehicles until Ford’s contract expired.)

Nowadays, amphibious tanks and transport vehicles are employed by militaries around the world as a means of ferrying cargo and troops seamlessly from water to land, typically in beach landings and river crossings. Most are relatively slow and tough to maneuver. Gibbs touts the Quadski as the first vehicle to reach 45 miles per hour both on the ground and on the water.

Despite their popularity with the military, amphibious vehicles haven’t taken off with consumers. The only non-military amphibious vehicle to ever be mass-produced is the German-made “Amphicar,” a two-door convertible manufactured in the 1960s (about 4,000 were sold, mostly in the U.S.). Former President Lyndon Baines Johnson used to scare guests to his vacation house by yelling “The brakes are out!” while driving his Amphicar down a hill and straight into a lake. One of the vehicles was even driven across the Straight of Gibraltar, from Africa to Spain.

For the moment, Gibbs seems confident his amphibians will succeed where other failed, and become a full-blown fad in the U.S.

“We'll respond to how the market develops,” he said. “We wouldn't be doing it without being very confident people will love them.”