For those of you who have watched TopGear (the old one of course), you may remember an episode where the trio attempted to cross the English Channel in car-boats. If you don’t then you may at least remember their cars. James had a Triumph Herald sailboat, Jeremy had a pickup with an outboard motor and Richard had a caravan boat thing.
Instead of a Channel, we find a Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand and if you are wondering whether it could be crossed in this car/boat then read on.
Actually, the car/boat cannot cross any water body because it is based on a van. Specifically, a ’95 Ford E-350 van and the hull has been adapted from a 24-foot Sea Ray Sundancer, a small boat for you non-maritime nerds like myself.
The project took six months and was carried out by a company called Mark’s Custom Cruisers in Georgia. Mark is very familiar with conversions of this type. Their team even created a Cessna based vehicle that was used in Black Panther!
When the hull was part of an actual boat, it could sleep four adults but now it serves as the engine bay for the car-boat thing. Speaking of which, the engine is a 4.9L V8 with the power going to the rear wheels only! Yes, this is a V8 powered rear wheel drive vehicle so it is virtually indistinguishable from a Mustang.
Apart from the hull, the windscreen and a few wooden panels are all that is left of the boat. Everything else has been taken from the Ford van. The dashboard, seats and even the air conditioning unit all find themselves in this car boat.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news at this point but you cannot actually ‘drive’ this on the water and you can’t drive it in the rain either. It’s more of an attention grabbing land yacht.
And the price for this land yacht? $90,000 USD. Yes, it’s steep but most of his customers by his creations for promotional purposes and this is certainly one that will catch your eye.
