Unikat (East German home-built amphibian)

This one-off amphibious car - offered for sale as a "Unikat", a unique piece - was designed and built by a private constructor in East Germany between 1983 and 1985. Materials and special vehicle parts were hard to obtain in the GDR, which made the work slow and painstaking. The car was shown to the public in 1987, for example at the Erfurt motor show and a large vehicle parade in central Berlin, then spent more than 20 years in a barn before being technically overhauled in 2010-2011. It later appeared in the German magazine Auto Bild Klassik and was put up for auction by its builder.

Design

The body is a fully welded self-supporting shell, with longitudinal members under the doors; the welded-on wings and roll bar form a rigid unit with it. The underside is shaped for low water resistance: slightly V-shaped at the front and the reverse at the rear, combined with a tunnel for the propeller.

The independent front suspension is based on Trabant parts, widened and without drive, with the leaf spring and steering housed in an external tunnel so that only the sealed steering column enters the cabin. The rear wheels are carried on motorcycle-style swinging arms with spring struts. A Skoda MB 1000 engine and gearbox drive half-shafts out into the wheel arches, from where chains turn the rear wheels. In the water a propeller at the stern is driven directly from the crankshaft through a dog clutch and two double universal joints; speed is set with a hand throttle and steering is by the front wheels. A built-in capstan, driven from the main engine through a friction clutch and reduction gear and controlled from the driver's seat, helps the car climb out of the water.

Parts came from across the Eastern Bloc: Trabant headlights, steering, front brakes and front leaf spring, Skoda S105 tail lights, a Wartburg rear brake and Zaporozhets rear springs. The car is 4.55 m long and 1.76 m high, weighs about 1,200 kg and reaches 75 km/h on land. It has two lockable watertight doors, a front luggage compartment and a heater, but it was never certified for road or water use.