Aquada

"While Gibbs watched a jet ‘bombing’ structures on his farm in October 1999, for a sixtieth birthday party treat, he had a team of engineers working away in the English Midlands on his amphibious car project. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours later, by the time Richard Serra’s *Te Tuhirangi Contour* was launched in February 2003, the team at Gibbs Technologies had nearly completed the world’s first high-speed amphibian legally permitted to drive fast on land and water. Gibbs presented the Aquada to the international media in London in September 2003, and the world was interested. Clips of the Aquada operating as a sports car on the road, then driving down a ramp and seconds later taking off as a jet boat fast across the water were the most downloaded items on the World Wide Web for more than 24 hours. Television stations from Turkey to Argentina covered the story with fascination."

"Gibbs had that mysterious alchemy in his personality that inspired great efforts; he was equally capable of providing entertainment. Adrian Locke, a finite element analysis engineer who did a lot of the work on the Aquada’s body structure, remembers showing Gibbs a new body material called Twintex. He’d laid it between two chairs to show its strength and was stunned when the 62-year-old Gibbs climbed on top and began bouncing up and down on it. ‘Yeah, it’s bloody strong stuff,’ he yelled.[8](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477408-606132179-8)"

"Afghanistan had been a nice diversion. Back in London, however, not everything was going according to plan for the Aquada. The cars were being built, and the invention had received numerous golden accolades. *Time Magazine* named it as one of the ‘Best Innovations of 2003’. A feature on design in the *New York Times* highlighted the car.[19](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477408-606132179-19) Leader writers fought over good lines to tell the story. The *Daily Telegraph* alighted on ‘Drink Driving — could Aquada be the ultimate plaything?’[20](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477408-606132179-20) But Gibbs’ basic business plan, to wow the world and then find a car manufacturer to make it under licence, wasn’t coming off. To his great annoyance every company they approached said that he hadn’t demonstrated the size of the market, therefore they couldn’t measure whether there’d be a return on their investment. They also worried about the effect of US product liability laws on such a radically new product. On reflection Gibbs concedes, ‘Quite naturally, people were sceptical as hell; would it work in salt water, could it handle rough conditions, would its complexity frighten customers, was it too expensive?’ Jenkins laments, ‘Our licensing idea fell on stony ground at that point; we needed someone with the balls to create the market and no one materialised. So Alan had to do it himself.’[21](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477408-606132179-21)"

"Through this difficult period Gibbs had a helpful distraction. In October 2003, just after the Aquada’s public launch, he’d bought a boat in partnership with Douglas Myers. No ordinary boat, *Senses* was a 59 metre, 1000 ton ship, equipped with two helipads, one helicopter and a flotilla of small craft, including a charming 12.8 metre Nelson tender and a Halmatic Atlantic 24, a high-speed rigid inflatable favoured by the British military. *Senses* had a crew of 14. *Senses* was designed to be equally at home in the Arctic or Saint-Tropez, and best of all, for Gibbs, it had a ramp at the stern up which he could drive an Aquada. With the helicopter, Aquada and other boats, *Senses* was really a luxury base for exploration. When cruising up the coast from Barcelona to Nice it was possible to fly into Perpignan for a bistro lunch, or drive the Aquada in."

"Through this difficult period Gibbs had a helpful distraction. In October 2003, just after the Aquada’s public launch, he’d bought a boat in partnership with Douglas Myers. No ordinary boat, *Senses* was a 59 metre, 1000 ton ship, equipped with two helipads, one helicopter and a flotilla of small craft, including a charming 12.8 metre Nelson tender and a Halmatic Atlantic 24, a high-speed rigid inflatable favoured by the British military. *Senses* had a crew of 14. *Senses* was designed to be equally at home in the Arctic or Saint-Tropez, and best of all, for Gibbs, it had a ramp at the stern up which he could drive an Aquada. With the helicopter, Aquada and other boats, *Senses* was really a luxury base for exploration. When cruising up the coast from Barcelona to Nice it was possible to fly into Perpignan for a bistro lunch, or drive the Aquada in."