ATV’s are useful because they’re can go anywhere. They’re called all-terrain-vehicles, and for the most part, they are. Regardless of the type of land, there’s an ATV that can drive over it. Where they fall flat, of course, is where there isn’t any land. Quads and UTV’s might be great for traversing horrible terrain, but what if there’s a river in your way? Or a lake? You can’t just drive over that. Or at least, you used to not be able to drive over that. Gibbs Sports has come up with a solution to the water problem. They call it: The Quadski.
If the name sounds like a combination of Quad and Jetski, that’s because it is. This is an amphibious ATV. While the concept alone isn’t exactly a new one, this is the first one that we’ve seen in a quad configuration for a single rider. Most amphibious vehicles are six to eight wheeled behemoths. They’re not exactly nimble like the Quadski proposes to be.
The Quadski can get up to 45mph both on land and in the water. It’s not Raptor 700R, but whatever. The Raptor 700R also won’t float when you take a wrong turn into a river. Luckily, it only takes four seconds to retract the wheels in case you end up in the water accidentally.
None of that is tempered by the price. They’re asking $40,000 for this thing. I mean, I get it. “No one has sold an amphibious quad before!” “Think of all the research and development that went into it!” All that’s true, fine and dandy. At the end of the day though, you could’ve bought a Mustang GT or Camaro SS. I’m not saying that those are equivalent purchases (obviously no one is going to take a Camaro off-road and into a lake), but 40k is really expensive.
Check it out in action below. Let us know what you think of amphibious contraption!
The might not be a monster truck, but it’s definitely still a monster. This was a RZR XP 900 before the guys at High Lifter got their hands on it. It keeps the RZR’s stock frame underneath all the extra frame they added, but everything else is custom. Those seats? Custom. The steering wheel? Also, custom. The 640hp powerglide Chevy in the back? Very custom.
Obviously, this thing was built to hit the mud. With power and tires like that, we’ve got no reason to believe that it won’t. Watch it romp around in the videos below.
We have a lot of fun on ATV connection, but we want to talk for a little bit about about a hidden menace. Cows.
Oh you laugh now, but cows are an ever present threat to the off road renegade. They’re quiet (except when they’re mooing), stealthy (again, when they’re not mooing), and difficult to dodge. Watch as this unsuspecting rider faces the bovine threat head on.
*No cattle were harmed in the making of this video.
Nobody respects the art of multitasking quite as much as your ATVC editors- who, at present, are watching television, eating cold chicken and writing this article. So when it comes to the idea of hitting two birds with one stone as it were, we’re naturally interested. But when you look at what these two lazy landscapers came up with, the realization that their camouflaged hats are bit too tight becomes very clear. The toughest part of the operation, we assume, has to be determining who gets to drive the ATV blindly and who gets to sit up front, hoping the push-mower doesn’t get caught up on a bump.
