This Is the Amphi-Scooter, the 1964 Lambretta That Became a Legend

The '60s were also a wild time of experimenting in more ways than one. Over in Surrey, UK, one such experiment gave birth to the world's only amphibious scooter, a Lambretta that went down in history as the Amphi-Scooter. It also went down to the bottom of a lake shortly after its public introduction, but that's the downside of dreaming this big: failure is a very real possibility, and it often comes true.

Even so, the Amphi-Scooter is a legend – so much so that it got an official replica decades later, in 2015, in a project that involved considerable expense, over 700 hours of hard work, and even more hours of research and documentation for the original spec. That replica went on sale earlier this year when the builder, who is also the owner of the International Sidecar Museum from Cingoli, Italy, auctioned it off.

The original Amphi-Scooter is forever lost, but it lives on in the collective memory as the world's first amphibious two-wheeler and a most bonkers invention with an equally bonkers presentation. That last part is what we're here for today, thanks to an older video from British news archive British Pathe. You can see it at the bottom of the page in all its glory: an ad that posed as a piece of news featuring the dandiest gentleman and a pretty model casually taking their daily commute onto the Thames to beat traffic. It was all possible, of course, thanks to the Amphi-Scooter.

The video was a disguised ad because there are clear indications that the Amphi-Scooter was nothing but a promotional vehicle that was probably never meant for mass production. It was the brainchild of Surrey-based Lambretta dealership Lambretta Concessionaires, specifically communications director Philip Keeler and development head Rex White. One was the dreamer, and the other was the doer. Keeler wanted something to bring to the 1965 Brighton Motorcycle and Cycle Show, preferably something that would boost attention to the J125 Lambretta scooter that wasn't exactly killing it in terms of sales.

They took at 1964 Lambretta J125, which had the pressed monocoque chassis going in its favor as it increased its watertight capabilities and added two fold-up sideboards and a separate drivetrain for water mode. The design was nothing spectacular, aside from the waterborne capabilities: the scooter was still a scooter but now boasting the pair of fiberglass boards for buoyancy, a rotary paddle attached to the rear hub, a sealed exhaust, and a rudder attached to the front wheel.

Performance was nothing spectacular either, based on the sole surviving footage of it in motion. The presenter says with typical British humor that it allowed movement "at a leisurely pace," which is just a delicate way of saying that the thing was super-slow.

Not just that, but it was not the most comfortable thing either since getting it to water involved a considerable degree of splashing, which, in turn, resulted in two riders with at least half a leg soaked to the bone. Considering this was the UK, where the sun only shines on special occasions, it was far from the ideal for the daily commute across London, despite how it was presented.

The first demos of the Amphi-Scooter were conducted with Douglas Bedford, a Concessionaires employee, at the controls and a local model. For the ad, London Lambretta dealer Jack Hornsby took over, bringing over his stiff upper lip, his suit and tie, his bowler hat and pair of leather gloves, and his gorgeous model daughter as the willing stranger who agrees to be a passenger, because the novelty factor is too much to say no.

The ad also touted the Amphi-Scooter as safe or, at the very least, "safer than a few seats in Parliament," a hilarious jab made as footage of the contraption making its way past the Houses of Parliament played onscreen. If you're in the mood for more online jokes, legend has it that the Amphi-Scooter is still halfway to making it to the other side of the Thames. At least it's not stuck in traffic like everyone else.

The Amphi-Scooter is one of those vintage inventions that might have made sense when they were designed but could have never passed the test of time. Like others, it was unsafe and had a decided homemade quality about it (and not in a good way), and was more trouble than the benefits it claimed to enable. But it was an awesome contraption, if only because someone dreamed it and then manifested it into existence.