Amphicar ends six decade run on loan at Oshawa’s Auto Museum

The end of a (semi-amphibious) era at the Canadian Automotive Museum happened last month when the Amphicar, which had been on loan at the Oshawa museum for nearly 60 years was returned to its owner.

For some regular visitors, it was bittersweet to find the amphibious automobile not in its usual place upstairs.

“For the past 60 years I looked forward to climbing the stairs to the second floor of the Automotive Museum to see the Amphicar looming overhead. Today it’s not there,” said Andrew McCarnan on the Vintage Oshawa Facebook site, while acknowledging that the unique vehicle was sold by the owner’s family. “It is gone forever.”

The Amphicar was a unique vehicle that offered modest performance compared to most contemporary boats or cars and generally appealed to buyer’s sense of the whimsical instead of the practical, with each trip into the water requiring greasing at 13 points, one of which required removal of the rear seat.

The German-made Amphicar Model 770 was launched at the 1961 New York Auto Show and sold up to 1968, despite production ending in 1965. Just 3,878 model were built.

“We had it on loan since the early days of the museum. In the 1960s we didn’t have many vehicles to display and relied on the automotive community to loan vehicles to us,” said auto museum board member Greg Johnston, who said the vehicle’s popularity has waned over the years and was mostly based on nostalgia. “The Amphicar generated interest as it has been on display consistently for so long. It was an interesting vehicle but certainly didn’t have the same draw as it did in the early days of the museum.”

Newer vehicles, from Disney’s Lightning McQueen, the Magna Terrero Concept Vehicle, and the New Brunswick-built gull wing Bricklin (celebrating 50 years this month) have been better at capturing the interest of visitors in recent years but Johnston would not be averse to another Amphicar, should one be donated to the museum in the future.

In 2014, the publication Petrolicious described the Amphicar as “good for one thing: fun. “It’s not quick or flashy, but it’s iconic, unique and friendly. What more could you ask from a vintage car? The Amphicar might not make any sense and that’s precisely why it’s so wonderful.”

The vehicle was powered by a four-cylinder Triumph engine producing a whopping 43 hp, with propulsion in the water provided by twin propellers mounted under the rear bumper.

It may have not been too practical but the craft did end up in some crazy adventures.

The Amphicar arriving at the CNE in Toronto in 1962 after a Lake Ontario trip from Niagara-on-the-Lake

In August of 1962 two women drove their Amphicar from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Toronto’s CNE via Lake Ontario

In June 1965, two Amphicars successfully navigated the Yukon River in Alaska and two years later four Amphicars participated in the 1967 Yukon River Flotilla, a joint Alaska-Yukon project commemorating the memory of the Klondike gold rush

Amphicars appear in nearly a dozen movies – including Inspector Clouseau (1968) and Pontiac Moon (1994) – and U.S. President Lydon Johnson, a noted practical joker, owned a model as well. LBJ was said to enjoy frightening visitors at his Johnson City, Texas, ranch by driving them downhill in his Amphicar, directly into his property’s lake, all the while shouting that he had malfunctioning brakes.

The car made it onto The Simpsons (a fifth-season episode touting Springfield’s “Aqua-Car Factory”) and Walt Disney World in Florida offered Amphicar rides in 2015.

The memories of the strange car are still strong with many, who took to the Vintage Oshawa page to record them.

• “I remember 58 years ago watching one in Port Perry drive into lake Scugog.” – Martin
• “Sorry that it has gone from Oshawa. I remember seeing one of these in the water back in the 1960s in Nova Scotia.” – Mark
• “I have fond memories of that exact time too, thanks. End of an era.” – Sherry
• “Sad it could not have been given to the museum.” – Robert
• “Sad that money talks.” – Mary Lou

Attendance at the Simcoe Street museum has tripled over the past decade, with all but a couple of the vehicles on display owned by the museum, which houses the most significant collection of Canadian-made vehicles in the world.

The Amphicar in its former display in Oshawa