Rinspeed Splash

The Rinspeed Splash is a two-seat amphibious sports car built by the Swiss concept-car studio Rinspeed and unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2004 as the firm's tenth concept vehicle. Rinspeed founder Frank M. Rinderknecht billed it as the first sports car able to drive, swim and "fly" over water. Work had begun in March 2003.

Design

The Splash has a steel chassis with a watertight carbon-composite body, buoyancy chambers, separate bulkheaded compartments and two independent bilge-pump systems. At the push of a button an electronically controlled hydraulic system flips up the rear panel to reveal a boat-style Z-drive with a 360 mm three-bladed propeller, which can be lowered progressively once the water is deep enough. A custom transfer case sends power to the rear wheels, the propeller or both, and the steering wheel also steers the drive.

In water at least about 1.3 m deep, the Formula-1-style rear wing rotates down beneath the car and two hydrofoils fold out of the cockpit sides into a V shape. From around 30 km/h the car rises clear of the water, wheels included, and runs as a true hydrofoil about 60 cm above the surface at up to about 80 km/h. As a conventional amphibian it reaches almost 50 km/h, and on the road about 200 km/h, with 0-100 km/h in about 5.9 seconds.

Power comes from a turbocharged 750 cc two-cylinder Weber Motor engine of the kind used in Polaris personal watercraft and snowmobiles, giving 140 hp and running on natural gas or petrol through a six-speed manual gearbox. The car is 3.76 m long and 1.87 m wide on the road (4.13 m and 3.99 m with foils deployed) and weighs 825 kg empty.

Afterwards

In May 2004 an Amphi-Ranger owner saw the Splash at a vintage car meeting on Lake Como. The owner told him he would not put it in the water there, as each water test required at least two support boats, his full engineering team and usually a crane, since the car sits so low. There were no plans to produce it; Rinspeed itself had called series production unlikely.