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The Land Shark was a prototype vehicle designed in the UK that hoped to go in to production in 2003. Based on an idea in the mid 1980’s by David Baker the vehicle is an amphibious 3-wheeler hoped to beat the World Record for a vehicle of this type with estimated speeds of 200 mph on land and 50 mph on water. The three seater vehicle was to be constructed from lightweight, non-corrosive recycled materials and featured a range of engines from 400cc up to 1100cc with a semi-automatic gear change. (The latter producing 180 bhp)
On land the Land Shark would travel as a conventional 3-wheeler but when in water the front mud guards will rotate under the wheels and the back wheel would have powered the vehicle with an inbuilt propulsion system in the rear wheel that acts as a turbine pump sending the vehicle forward hydroplaning on its lowered front mud guards.
Both Lotus Engineering Ltd and D.E.R.A. (Defence Evaluation Research Agency) were involved with the Land Shark agreeing to handle the Research and Development stage as well as constructing the speed prototype.
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