Mark Richardson
Active Member
From ‘The Bearcat Files”
Ranchero Motors Incorporated, 231 Washington Avenue, Carlstadt, NJ 07072
TO: All Amphicar Dealers and Distributors
July 19, 1967
Dealer Bulletin #15
Popular Science Magazine has a wonderful article which will hit newsstands on July 27. (It actually came out in the August issue) This is the first write up from a major science magazine we have had in a long time. The editor has agreed to supply additional copies of the issue at wholesale rates to hand out to prospects.
Glenn E. Flinn
Executive Vice President
You can see the entire bulletin and scans of the article by going over to the Amphicar forum www.amphicar770.com
I Drove Through a Flood in a Car That “Swims”
By: Robert Gannon
The assignment: Test the Amphicar – that sporty little German import billed as “the car that swims”. Find out how she acts under really rough conditions.
“The Mississippi at the time was slopping over its banks as I drove south in an Amphicar convertible, which I picked up from a Minnesota dealer named Dick Holt of Hopkins, MN,’ writes Robert in the article.
Robert states that he drove 140 miles south to Winona, MN to find the flooding of the river to test the car. He and his photographer Bob Briesath chronicled the journey in great detail about the Amphicar journey on both land and in the water. They were looking for difficult situations and conditions to put the car into in the flooded areas and found several that make for a great story.
Robert Gannon was born in New York but spent his childhood in Minnesota. He attended Miami OH University and then joined the army in 1950 serving in Germany. After his service, he started writing articles for journals and publications including Readers Digest, Family Circle, Saturday Evening Post, and Glamour. He wrote articles for Popular Science for 44 years authoring 117 articles including one in December of 1967 telling the psychedelic story of him testing LSD under a doctor’s supervision. Robert sought out daring adventures like sky diving, flying a glider a record distance, and our story about bashing an Amphicar through a flooded river, to tell the stories in his articles. He won several awards for them through the years. He eventually went on to Penn State University to teach in the English department and was a sought-after public speaker later, often retelling the stories of those adventures.
It is no wonder that Glenn Flinn was so excited about this article from such an important science journal and a famous author testing an Amphicar in the flooded Mississippi river. The good news is the Amphicar performed better than expected and was put into some very dangerous situations and it did not fail to deliver the passengers safely back to dry land afterward.
Open the attached scans to read the article and see the pictures. It is a great story if you have never read it before.
Ranchero Motors Incorporated, 231 Washington Avenue, Carlstadt, NJ 07072
TO: All Amphicar Dealers and Distributors
July 19, 1967
Dealer Bulletin #15
Popular Science Magazine has a wonderful article which will hit newsstands on July 27. (It actually came out in the August issue) This is the first write up from a major science magazine we have had in a long time. The editor has agreed to supply additional copies of the issue at wholesale rates to hand out to prospects.
Glenn E. Flinn
Executive Vice President
You can see the entire bulletin and scans of the article by going over to the Amphicar forum www.amphicar770.com
I Drove Through a Flood in a Car That “Swims”
By: Robert Gannon
The assignment: Test the Amphicar – that sporty little German import billed as “the car that swims”. Find out how she acts under really rough conditions.
“The Mississippi at the time was slopping over its banks as I drove south in an Amphicar convertible, which I picked up from a Minnesota dealer named Dick Holt of Hopkins, MN,’ writes Robert in the article.
Robert states that he drove 140 miles south to Winona, MN to find the flooding of the river to test the car. He and his photographer Bob Briesath chronicled the journey in great detail about the Amphicar journey on both land and in the water. They were looking for difficult situations and conditions to put the car into in the flooded areas and found several that make for a great story.
Robert Gannon was born in New York but spent his childhood in Minnesota. He attended Miami OH University and then joined the army in 1950 serving in Germany. After his service, he started writing articles for journals and publications including Readers Digest, Family Circle, Saturday Evening Post, and Glamour. He wrote articles for Popular Science for 44 years authoring 117 articles including one in December of 1967 telling the psychedelic story of him testing LSD under a doctor’s supervision. Robert sought out daring adventures like sky diving, flying a glider a record distance, and our story about bashing an Amphicar through a flooded river, to tell the stories in his articles. He won several awards for them through the years. He eventually went on to Penn State University to teach in the English department and was a sought-after public speaker later, often retelling the stories of those adventures.
It is no wonder that Glenn Flinn was so excited about this article from such an important science journal and a famous author testing an Amphicar in the flooded Mississippi river. The good news is the Amphicar performed better than expected and was put into some very dangerous situations and it did not fail to deliver the passengers safely back to dry land afterward.
Open the attached scans to read the article and see the pictures. It is a great story if you have never read it before.
