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Is this "Club" like some kind of cult or something?
Hey! We resent that question! Just because some of our members enjoy donning ancient ritualistic Babylonian fish headwear before driving the car into the river or maybe have a couple-few figurines of
Oannes, Lord of Drippiness on the dash doesn't mean we're
kooks!
No way!In short, it was made by
Amphicar, not by any other auto maker. Designed and built in Germany based on amphibious prototypes developed by Hanns Trippel, it was hoped that the Amphicar would appeal to the then burgeoning American leisure market. A company called Amphicar Corporation of America was created to market the Amphicar, which was assembled in plants in Lübeck and later Berlin, Germany by Industrie-Werke Karlsruhe AG (IWK), a subsidiary of Deutschen Waggon und Maschinenfabriken GmbH (DWM), the post-War rechristening of the same "DWM" firm that had once produced the famous
Luger pistols. According to René Pohl, arguably one of the world's leading experts on amphibious vehicles, a total of 3,878 Amphicars were produced. Although no exact figures are available on how many have survived to this day, it is estimated that about 1,000+- Amphicars may currently exist in one state or another. Another "guesstimate" often heard among owners at gatherings reckons that the number of still working (i.e. swimming) Amphicars might be "about 500". Much more information about the history of the Amphicar can be found throughout the website.