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Kiwi entrepreneur Alan Gibbs may be on the verge of his biggest deal yet with the announcement that Lockheed Martin will work with his British-based company to develop a family of high-speed amphibious vehicles for military purposes.
Gibbs Technologies, which unveiled the James Bond-style Aquada sports-car-come-speedboat four years ago, is working with Lockheed to develop three concept vehicles: the 6m Expeditionary, capable of 75km/h on water and 129km/h on land; the 10.6m Riverine, able to do 65km/h on water and 105km/h on land; and the Terraquad, which can do 89km/h on water and 80km/h on land.
At an age when many have quit business for the golf course, the 67-year-old Gibbs is having "the most fun in my life" capitalising on his training as an engineer.
If the project gets to commercialisation stage, Lockheed will manufacture the HSAs (high-speed amphibians while Gibbs technologies will license the intellectual property.
In essence the HSAs, which can convert from land vehicles to high-speed boats in just five seconds, will cut the time marines and special forces are exposed to enemy threat while they transfer from land to water craft.
Given Gibbs' longtime fascination with war toys it seemed inevitable that his amphibians would ultimately gain a military use. But he says the US came knocking once news about the Aquada and other HSAs spread.
"If it all comes to fruition there will be a lot of business."
Last year Gibbs Technologies won a US Department of Defence foreign comparative test contract to evaluate its existing technology.
But it's a big move all the same, given the controversy which struck the amphibious vehicle industry when the Pentagon this year pulled the plug on a plan to build 1000 expeditionary fighting vehicles after problems developed with the General Dynamic prototypes.
By that stage more than US$1.7 billion ($2.4 billion) and 10 years' development time had been sunk.
Gibbs says his company's fleet of amphibians is in a different space. "We're not direct competitors at all."
Gibbs and Lockheed are using an integrated teaming approach, with the British company contributing the vehicle design, high-speed amphibian technology and prototypes and US-based Lockhead (which will act at team leader) providing system integration skills, weapons system expertise, computing and intelligence capabilities and logistics.
The initiative will take big bucks to bring to fruition. But Gibbs says he's not interested in floating Gibbs Technologies on the London sharemarket to raise capital.
"I've had enough of public companies," he said from his Nuneaton development base in Britain's midlands.
Gibbs was a founding shareholder in the consortium that bought Telecom from the NZ Government in 1990. But he has since cut his involvement in NZ companies.
He's already invested US$100 million ($139 million) since he began his foray into amphibious vehicles 10 years ago.
His first product was the Aquada, a sports car that can turn into a speedboat at the touch of a button. It reaches 161km/h on land and 48km/h on water.
It was launched with all the pizzaz of a Bond movie in 2003. And it was expensive: £150,000 ($413,000) but expected to come down to around £75,000 ($206,600) as production was scaled up.
Gibbs Technologies clocked up more PR points when Sir Richard Branson drove the Aquada across the English Channel, breaking the then amphibious vehicle record by four hours and 20 minutes.
The British Virgin tycoon wanted to put an Aquada fleet to service for business customers on his Virgin Atlantic airline, as, by using the Thames as a highway, it could cut 45 minutes off the journey to Heathrow Airport.
But although 45 prototypes were sold, mass production of the Aquada was put on ice when Rover, maker of the Aquada's 2.5 litre V6-K series engine, collapsed and was sold to BMW.
The company is now lining up an alternative engine and expects to release details later this year.
Gibbs is very excited about the future.
"I only hope I live long enough to see it call come to fruition," he says.
