Top Gear's Amphibious Cars: The Rudyard Lake Disaster
A sailing Triumph Herald, a VW camper houseboat and a Hilux with an enormous outboard. Two miles of water. One of them made it, very slowly.
The Amphicar proved in the 1960s that a car can also be a boat, as long as you don't mind it being a mediocre example of both. In 2006, Top Gear set out to prove it could be done worse, and on a budget.
Three ideas, all different, all bad
The brief was to turn a car into an amphibious vehicle. The presenters didn't know what kind of water they'd face, which explains a lot.
James May bought a 1962 Triumph Herald and decided not to use its engine on the water at all. Instead he fitted a mast and sails. Richard Hammond, expecting a river or canal, bought a Volkswagen T3 camper van and set about turning it into a houseboat "of sorts". Jeremy Clarkson chose a Toyota Hilux, partly because Top Gear had already proved it was very hard to break, and partly because the back of a pickup is an excellent place to bolt an outboard motor. He was offered a 2.3-horsepower motor and asked for two 225-horsepower units instead. He settled for one.
The lake
The test was to drive the cars to Rudyard Lake near Leek, in Staffordshire, and cross two miles of it. In March. May arrived late, having had to detour around a low bridge because of his mast.
Then they launched. May's Herald floated, briefly, before drifting into weeds. Hammond had bolted his propeller to the flywheel, and it broke when he drove in, leaving him with no drive and, shortly afterwards, a camper van that was sinking. Clarkson, nicknaming his creation the "Toybota", stopped to fish Hammond out, then charged across the lake at full throttle, took on water over the side, turned too hard at the finishing pontoon and capsized within sight of the end.
May, meanwhile, kept going at what the narration called "the slowest speed ever recorded by man". The Grampian Transport Museum, which now owns the Herald, records that the sailboat won the lake challenge.
What went wrong
Everything you'd expect: propellers that broke on contact with the ramp, buoyancy that was more of a hope, and in Clarkson's case, a lot of power with very little plan for using it.
The weirdest bit
The most successful amphibious car was the one that ignored its engine entirely and treated the car as a hull with a mast. Very slow, but it was the only one still upright at the end.
What happened next
Top Gear wasn't finished with the idea. A year later the presenters came back with improved versions and tried to cross the English Channel.
Where is it now?
James May's Triumph Herald sailboat
In a museumAs of November 2026Grampian Transport Museum, Alford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Listed in the Grampian Transport Museum Collection, current location 'On display'. The museum closes November to March; its Top Gear exhibition ran until 25 October 2026.
Jeremy Clarkson's 'Toybota' Hilux
Whereabouts unknownAs of November 2026Sank in Rudyard Lake during filming; what happened to it afterwards hasn't been published. The museum's Nissank page confirms the Toybota 'did not survive the Lake challenge'.
Source: Grampian Transport Museum: Nissank (mentions the Toybota)
Richard Hammond's first Dampervan
Whereabouts unknownAs of November 2026Not on any public list we could find. Hammond built a second Dampervan for the Channel attempt, which the museum says was needed 'as the first Dampervan sank'.
Seen one of these somewhere, or know where it went? Send us a tip through the tip line, ideally with a link we can check. We never publish a location we can't verify.
Related cars in the Quirk Database: Amphicar 770.
Fact-check pit lane
Facts in this piece were checked against:
Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the BBC, Top Gear, Amazon or The Grand Tour. Show names are used only to identify the episodes we're writing about. We don't use show stills or screenshots. Photos are freely licensed Wikimedia Commons pictures of the vehicles on public display, credited under each one.