HydroCar Inventor Puts It Up For Sale

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January 11, 2011 by Angela Shupe | 0 Comments

Rick Dobbertin, the man who created a HydroCar out of a 1959 milk tank truck and drove it around the world, has created a second vehicle and he’s now trying to sell it on ebay reports Reuters.

Dobbertin, 58, of Pennellville in upstate New York, spent almost nine years and $300,000 building the HydroCar. It has a 762 horsepower engine and travels at speeds up to 100 mph on land and 25-30 mph on water. In water, the car is buoyed by pontoons that, on land, are raised and become its fenders.

“The HydroCar made its debut on the cover of the January 2004 Popular Mechanics magazine,” Dobbertin notes on eBay. A sci-fi looking car gracing the magazine cover closely resembles Dobbertin’s creation.

While the HydroCar has been listed for sale, it is a “work in progress” and probably isn’t ready yet for regular use, he said on Monday.

“I’m selling it as a collector piece more than anything,” he said. “There’s still a little bit of work that needs to be done on it.”

His goal is to get the HydroCar to speeds above 50 mph on water.

The original price tag for the HydroCar was $1 million but when it failed to draw bids, Dobbertin dropped it to $777,000.