9 amphibious vehicles that actually reached production

Most amphibious vehicles never left the workshop, sank on their maiden run, or amounted to a single hand-built prototype. A rare few cleared that bar and rolled into full-scale manufacture, serving armies, coast guards, and civilian buyers for years at a stretch. Here are nine amphibious vehicles that made it all the way to production.

1. Amphicar Model 770: The Convertible That Swam

The Amphicar Model 770 debuted at the 1961 New York Auto Show and entered full production at plants in Lubeck and Berlin-Borsigwalde, where workers eventually finished 3,878 examples before the line shut down. A 43-horsepower Triumph engine drove both the road wheels and twin nylon propellers bolted to the rear bumper, letting owners drive off a boat ramp without swapping any gear.

Because the US Coast Guard classified it as a vessel the moment it touched water, every Amphicar left the factory with navigation lights and a small flag mount so it could legally share a lake or river with real boats. Sealing the bilge by hand before each launch became a ritual few owners ever skipped.

2. Volkswagen Schwimmwagen Type 166: The Wehrmacht’s Amphibious Beetle

Volkswagen built 15,584 examples of the Schwimmwagen Type 166 between 1941 and 1944, with 14,276 assembled at Fallersleben and the remaining 1,308 produced by Porsche. A propeller lowered from the rear deck coupled directly to the crankshaft, pushing the light four-wheel-drive body through water at roughly 6 mph.

On land, running gear shared with the Kubelwagen made the Schwimmwagen easy to service in the field, and its low weight let it scramble up muddy banks that heavier vehicles bogged down in. Surviving examples remain the most-produced amphibious vehicle of all time by a wide margin.

3. DUKW: The Truck the Navy Trusted

GMC and Chevrolet built 21,147 DUKWs before production ended in 1945, split between GMC’s Pontiac West plant and Chevrolet’s St. Louis truck plant, both working from the deuce-and-a-half chassis. A single propeller and rudder handled water propulsion while the six-wheel drivetrain stayed engaged, letting the truck climb straight up a beach without stopping to reconfigure.

That seamless land-to-water handoff made the DUKW indispensable for ferrying supplies from ships anchored offshore directly to inland depots, skipping the bottleneck of a fixed dock. Its central tire inflation system, adjustable from the cab, let drivers soften the tires for sand and firm them back up on pavement.

4. LARC-V: Built for the Roughest Landings

The Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo, or LARC-V, was designed in 1959 and entered production in 1963, with 950 built for military and research use. Its riveted aluminium hull provides its own buoyancy, four-wheel drive its own traction, and oversized balloon tires double as extra flotation once the craft is afloat.

That redundancy lets a LARC-V punch through breaking surf that would swamp a conventional landing craft, which is why Australia’s Antarctic program still uses one to make beach landings at Macquarie Island regardless of weather. Its open cargo bed carries several tons of freight straight off a ship’s cargo net.

5. Ford GPA Seep: A Jeep That Floated, Barely

Ford built 12,774 examples of the GPA, nicknamed the Seep, in 1942 and 1943 by welding a boat-shaped hull around a standard Jeep drivetrain. Its 54-horsepower Ford four-cylinder pushed the 1.75-ton vehicle to about 50 mph on paved roads and a modest 5.5 mph once a rear propeller took over in the water.

Low freeboard made the Seep prone to swamping in anything rougher than calm water, and crews often found it too heavy and too fragile for the surf landings it was designed for. Many were passed to Soviet forces under Lend-Lease, where the chassis proved sturdier than the amphibious hull.

6. Alvis Stalwart: The British Army’s Water Jets

Alvis produced 956 Mark 2 Stalwarts between 1960 and 1971, with 932 going into British Army service as a high-mobility load carrier. Twin water jets mounted at the rear gave it several knots of speed afloat, while a six-wheel-drive chassis shared with the Saracen armoured car handled the rough ground on either side of a river crossing.

Crews frequently pulled the jet units out once a unit’s amphibious tasking lapsed, trading the extra weight for cargo capacity on routine road runs. That swap-in, swap-out approach made the Stalwart as much a heavy hauler as a river-crossing specialist over its operational life.

7. BAV 485: Moscow’s Answer to the DUKW

The Soviet Union built the BAV 485 from 1949 to 1962 as a close copy of the American DUKW, mounting its hull on ZIS-151 truck running gear. Twin tunnelled propellers and their own rudders drove it through the water, backed by two centrifugal bilge pumps rated at 300 and 150 litres a minute for the inevitable leaks.

That extra pumping capacity mattered because the riveted Soviet hull leaked more than its American inspiration, and crews learned to check the bilges constantly during river crossings. The BAV remained in Warsaw Pact service well after the DUKW itself had been retired by NATO armies.

8. PTS-M: Tracks Instead of Wheels

The tracked PTS amphibious transporter entered Soviet service in 1965, built on a stretched version of the ATS-59 artillery tractor chassis. The improved PTS-M of 1969 weighs 36 tonnes and hauls either 10,000 kg of cargo or 20 to 70 troops, loaded through a rear ramp instead of being craned over the side like earlier designs.

That rear-ramp loading let crews drive trucks or light armor straight into the cargo bay before a river crossing, then drive them straight back out on the far bank. Its wide steel tracks, rather than wheels, gave it far better traction on muddy or frozen approaches than wheeled amphibians managed.

9. Gibbs Quadski: A Quad That Retracts Its Wheels

Gibbs Sports Amphibians launched the Quadski in October 2012 from a factory in Detroit, building a four-wheeler that reaches 45 mph on both land and water. A single push-button retracts the wheels in about five seconds and hands propulsion to an engine-driven marine impeller, letting a rider drive straight off a boat ramp without stopping.

That speed on both surfaces set it apart from slower amphibious ATVs that came before it, though the retracting-wheel mechanism added enough complexity that Gibbs kept production numbers modest. It remains one of the few amphibious vehicles marketed to private buyers rather than a government or municipal fleet.