For Sale: A TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian – A Rotary-Powered Amphibious Off-Roader

The TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian is a remarkable vehicle: it’s four-wheel drive, it’s amphibious, it has four-wheel steering, it’s powered by a Wankel rotary engine, and it can carry up to six people despite its small size.

There can be little doubt that this is one of the most unusual vehicles ever made, which is why it’s a little surprising that it’s not better known. It was originally developed as a helicopter deployable military off-roader – but in the end just 60 were made.

Fast Facts – The TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian

• The TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian was developed and built in Karslruhe, Germany under the corporate umbrella of the TAG Group (Techniques d’Avant Garde), better known for their watches.
• The design of the TAG Croco 4×4 is simple but brilliant. It uses two steel tubs that double as hulls in the water, they’re articulated about a central axis to give the vehicle improved wheel articulation.
• The key design criteria was that the vehicle be simple and cheap to make, easy to maintain, able to cover almost any terrain, and still be light enough to be deployed by helicopter.
• Power is provided by an NSU Wankel rotary engine and sent to all four wheels, there is a slip-on propeller system for the rear when water use is required, and the low-pressure balloon tires act as the vehicle’s only suspension.

Designing The Next Jeep

The desire to build the next Willys Jeep has led to a staggering array of fascinating off-road vehicles over the years. The simple design and excellent capabilities of the original Jeep inspired automakers around the world – leading to the Land Rover, Unimog, Land Cruiser, and countless others.

Above Video: This short film shows the TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian in action both on land and on the water – it also shows the propeller installation process.

Perhaps the one chink in the armor of the Willys Jeep was its inability to cross waterways. During WWII the Germans had the amphibious Volkswagen Schwimmwagen which had proved effective, but was produced in far lower numbers than the American Jeep.

In the years since the war many engineers have tackled the design challenge of creating a simple, off-road capable amphibious vehicle with varying degrees of success. The TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian is one of the most interesting of them.

TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian Specifications

The name of the TAG Croco 4×4 comes from its parent company TAG combined with a portmanteau of CROoss – COuntry – though of course “Croco” also means crocodile, which is an apt name for the little 4×4.

The fact that the engineers who worked on this project managed to incorporate four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, two hulls articulated about a central axis, a propeller drive system, and a lightweight Wankel rotary engine is remarkable.

The two tubs that make up the body are articulated around a central point, allowing them to move independently of one another and offer good wheel articulation.

The plan was to design an entirely new kind of off-road vehicle that would be well-suited to military use, and to use by forestry services, farmers, outdoors people, surveyors, geologists, and anyone else who needed transport across wild terrain.

The weight of the vehicle was strictly controlled during development to ensure that it would float well, and to ensure it would be deployable by helicopter – a key criteria for military buyers.

The vehicle also had to be as simple as possible, so it was designed around two steel tubs that doubled as watertight hulls in the water. No suspension was fitted, instead the TAG Croco uses low-pressure balloon tires which assist with floating and soaking up bumps and shocks while driving.

A Wankel Rotary Engine (Under The Seat)

A 440cc single-rotor NSU-Wankel engine was built under license and installed under the front seat for easy access, it produces 30 bhp and 45 Nm of torque, and it has two forward speeds and one reverse. The top speed is 56 km/h or 35 mph.

Depending on the user’s requirements the TAG Croco can be fitted with up to six seats, or just two front seats with the rear section acting as cargo storage. A clever four-wheel steering system combined with a four-wheel drive system give the vehicle remarkable dexterity off-road, and it’s well-suited to use on mud, thick sand, snow, and other oftentimes difficult surfaces.

The TAG Croco has no suspension, so it’s fitted with large low-pressure balloon tires that act as basic suspension and also assist with flotation when on the water.

Unfortunately no military buyers were forthcoming, the TAG Croco remained in limited production from 1978 until 1986, but ultimately just 60 or so are believed to have been built.

The 1983 TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian Shown Here

The TAG Croco you see here is one of the nicest preserved examples we’ve seen come up for sale, in fact we covered this same vehicle back in January of 2020.

This vehicle is a 1983 model that was delivered new to the Forestry Corps in northern Italy, it still carries the green and white paint scheme and logos of the service. It’s not known why, but the rangers put almost no miles on the vehicle at all, just 135 kms or 35 hours of operation from new.

It’s now due to roll across the auction block in Paris with Artcurial on the 18th of March with a price guide of $28,300 – $50,900 USD. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing.

Images courtesy of Artcurial + Massimiliano Serra

The post For Sale: A TAG Croco 4×4 Amphibian – A Rotary-Powered Amphibious Off-Roader appeared first on Silodrome.

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The Unusual Scorpion P6 “Supertrike”

You’ve doubtless heard the term superbike before, what you’re looking at here is a Scorpion P6 “supertrike” – a high-performance three-wheeled car powered by a 126 bhp Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R engine.

Although three-wheeled vehicles like this may look a little awkward at first they can actually make a lot of sense. As they have three wheels rather than four they can be registered as motorcycles, which means they don’t have to adhere to the long list of regulations applied to four-wheeled automobiles.

Fast Facts – The Scorpion P6 “Supertrike”

• The Scorpion P6 is a reverse trike developed by Scorpion Motorsports out of Miami, Florida. It’s road legal in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries.
• Each P6 is built around a tubular steel space frame with an aluminum semi-monocoque elements and a GRP body, they have Formula 1-style pushrod front suspension, a mid-mounted superbike engine, and a single rear wheel on a motorcycle swing arm with a monoshock.
• Scorpion Motorsports is no longer in business however when they were operational they sold the P6 in either kit or turnkey form, and you could pay extra for the turbocharged engine option.
• The performance of the turbo ZX-6R engine version was blistering, with the 0 – 60 mph dash completed in 3.5 seconds, 0 – 100 mph in 10 seconds, and it’s said to be capable of 1.5 G cornering.

Weird & Wonderful – Cars With Three Wheels

Three-wheeled cars are a bit of an historical anomaly, they first appeared around the turn of the 20th century and despite their unusual nature they’ve refused to go extinct. Newly designed takes on the concept keep reappearing and often making it into production, albeit usually not for long.

The lightweight chassis of the Scorpion P6 includes both tubular steel and aluminum semi-monocoque elements, with F1-style pushrod front suspension and Wilwood brakes.

The most famous three-wheelers in history are undoubtably those made by the Morgan Motor Company in England.

They started out making three-wheelers all the way back in 1909 before slowly transitioning to four-wheeled cars, though they do occasionally bring new three-wheelers to market like the new Morgan Super 3.

Due to the fact that motorcycles can be fitted with sidecars, vehicles with three-wheels are typically classed as motorcycles for tax and registration purposes. This has meant that they can be built and sold far more cheaply which was their initial selling point.

People also fell in love with the pure, analogue driving experience, and three-wheeled cars have become cult classics with a rabid fanbase.

The Scorpion P6

The Scorpion P6 was developed by the team at Scorpion Motorsports in Miami, Florida to be a true 21st century take on the under represented high performance three-wheeler genre.

They created an all-new tubular steel chassis with aluminum semi-monocoque elements and a fiberglass body, with F1-style pushrod front suspension, a swing arm rear with a monoshock, and a mid-mounted superbike engine supplied by the Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R.

The single-seater (monoposto) cockpit offers a driving experience similar to a Formula Ford-type open wheeled race car.

When ordering your P6 new you could choose between a kit build option or a turnkey car, with both naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions on offer producing 126 bhp and 150+ bhp respectively.

The Scorpion P6 weighs in at just 730 lbs (331 kgs), a mere fraction the weight of a standard sports car. Performance is brisk, the turbo variant can do the 0 – 60 mph sprint in 3.5 seconds and the 0 – 100 mph in 10 seconds.

Wilwood brakes are fitted up front and the P6 can be fitted with aerodynamically active adjustable front and rear wings. Sadly the company that created the P6, Scorpion Motorsports, is no longer in business so the only way to get one is to buy a lightly used example like the one pictured in this article.

This Scorpion P6 has just 100 miles on the odometer (160 kms) and it’s powered by the reliable and fuss-free naturally aspirated version of the Kawasaki Ninja ZX6R engine producing 126 bhp.

If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can click here to visit the listing on Collecting Cars. It’s currently being auctioned live online out of Dundee in Scotland.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

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The Cunningham C-3 – A Rare American Homologation Special

The Cunningham C-3 was a high-performance GT car developed by America’s Cup winning sailor and racing driver Briggs Cunningham. The C-3 was never intended to be profitable to manufacture – it was created to meet the 25 car homologation requirement to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Cunningham was by all accounts an incredibly talented racing driver, he also happened to be the son of a wealthy American financier and heir to the Swift meatpacking fortune – this meant he had almost unlimited funds to pursue his dreams of competing at Le Mans in an American car.

Fast Facts – The Cunningham C-3

• The Cunningham C-3 was developed to meet the 25 car minimum production homologation limit to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Ultimately there would be five cabriolets and twenty coupes produced.
• Cunningham established his new marque in West Palm Beach, Florida. Chassis would be completed and sent to Turin-based Carrozzeria Vignale to have the bodies fitted – bodies that had been designed by celebrated Italian automotive designer Giovanni Michelotti.
• The C-3 was never designed to race though it was a high-performance car for its day with excellent handling and ample power provided by the Chrysler Hemi V8 engine which was tuned to produce 220 hp – up from 180 hp in stock configuration.
• The beautiful styling of the C-3 won it many fans though relatively few could afford it, with a price tag in the $10,000+ USD range – well in excess of $100,000 in 2022 USD.

Briggs Cunningham

Briggs Cunningham was one of those people who was fast in whatever they were piloting, be it a sailing vessel, an aircraft, or a race car.

Above Video: Jay Leno shows off his recently restored Cunningham C-3 in this episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, he discusses the restoration process, and gives some interesting historical insight into Briggs Cunningham and the C-3.

He was born into one of the wealthiest families in the United States but he was never one to sit on his laurels – he was a highly-competitive tennis player, a brakeman on the Olympic bobsled team, an America’s Cup winning skipper, an accomplished pilot, and a dedicated racing driver who loved nothing more than racing at Le Mans.

Le Mans would become a lifelong obsession for Cunningham, he competed in the event nine times from 1950 until 1963 with a four year gap from ’56 to ’59. In 1950 he raced the highly unusual Cunningham “Le Monstre” Spider – a Cadillac Series 61-based vehicle with a custom lightweight body.

This seems to have wetted his appetite for racing his own cars, he founded the B.S. Cunningham Company to build custom cars specifically for racing at Le Mans. He raced his own cars at Le Mans in ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54, and ’55. In later years he would race a Corvette and later an E-Type Jaguar.

In order to race at Le Mans you needed to have at least 25 production versions of a car made, a homologation requirement that was intended to stop people from building extreme prototypes. being a man of means, Briggs Cunningham simple founded his own automaker and built the required 25 cars – all of which are still accounted for.

The interior of the car is beautifully trimmed in tan leather, it has a wood-rimmed steering wheel, radio, heater, and a full suite of instrumentation housed in a leather-wrapped dash.

The Cunningham C-3

As an homologation special the Cunningham C-3 was intended to pave the way for Briggs Cunningham and his team to claim an American win at Le Mans, driving a car that was built in the United States.

The C-3 was built up on an American-made chassis fitted with many components from period American production cars, like suspension and brake parts, engines, axles, and transmissions. Cunningham opted to use the powerful new Chrysler 331 cubic inch FirePower Hemi V8 topped with four Zenith single-barrel carburetors.

In stock trim from Chrysler this engine produced 180 bhp but after some attention from Cunningham’s men it was turning out 220 bhp with 300 ft lbs of torque – a prodigious power figure for the 1950s.

Once the rolling chassis was completed it was shipped off to Vignale in Italy, a coachbuilding company that also built many Ferraris in the 1950s. In fact may have noted the similarities between the body of the Cunningham C-3 and the body of the Ferrari 212 Inter.

Once Vignale had fitted the body the car was shipped back to the United States for completion and sale, with pricing varying from just below $10,000 to well over $13,000 USD – far in excess of $100,000 in 2022 US dollars.

Cunningham and his team built a special version of the Chrysler 331 cubic inch FirePower Hemi V8 with four Zenith single-barrel carburetors that produced 40 bhp more than the original engine.

Despite the cost all 25 cars were built and sold, with five cabriolets and twenty coupes produced. Today these cars typically sell for somewhere around the $1 million dollar mark when they (infrequently) come up for sale.

The 1953 Cunningham C-3 Cabriolet Shown Here

The car you see here is a 1953 Cunningham C-3 cabriolet, it was bought new by racer and rare book collector Irving Robbins and shown at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1956, 1957, and later in 2015.

When it was first delivered back to the United States with its new Vignale body this car, chassis 5441, was placed on display at Alfred Momo’s in New York. When Irving Robbins bought the car he part traded in his race-damaged Cunningham C-2.

Over the intervening years this car was owned by a number of people, it passed through three well-respected private collections, one of whom had the car carefully restored.

Briggs Cunningham’s daughter Lucie would later buy the car to enjoy with her mother, and she showed it at the 2013 Greenwich Concours d’Elegance.

The car is in excellent shape throughout and it’s due to cross the auction block with RM Sotheby’s on the 5th of March, the price guide is $900,000 – $1,200,000 USD and you can click here to visit the listing.

Images: Steven Klucik ©2022 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s

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Full Documentary: Tucker – The Man and The Car

Tucker – The Man and The Car is a half hour long film created for the Tucker Corporation in the mid-1940s to showcase both the groundbreaking new Tucker 48 production car, and the story of its creator – Preston Tucker.

The story of the Tucker 48 became famous after the release of the 1988 film Tucker: The Man and His Dream by Francis Ford Coppola starring Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen. Interestingly, Coppola is a Tucker 48 owner and he displays his car at his winery in California.

The Tucker 48, also known as the Tucker Torpedo, was a revolutionary car for its time. It incorporated a wide range of features designed to make it as safe as possible – this was decades before the wider automotive community would start really paying attention to the crash safety of their vehicles.

Preston Tucker standing next to a Tucker 48 outside his factory, this photograph is believed to have been taken in 1947. Public relations image courtesy of the Tucker Corporation.

With its perimeter frame and integral roll bar for crash protection, the Tucker 48 would have been one of the safest cars on the road if had made it into full production.

The sheer number of safety features that were rolled into the 48 is remarkable, it featured pop-out windshields, seat belts, a padded dashboard, and the central headlight was designed to turn with the front wheels to illuminate around corners.

The sheer number of innovations that were incorporated into the Tucker 48 was remarkable, many of them decades ahead of their time. Click the image to see a larger version so you can read the text.

This film gives a good insight into both Preston Tucker and the Tucker 48, it is a promotional film so it can be a little fawning at times, but well worth the watch. If you’d like to read and see more about the car and the man behind it you can click here to see the IMDB listing for Tucker: The Man and His Dream by Francis Ford Coppola or you can click here to read the Smithsonian article on the company.

Interestingly, Preston Tucker’s great-grandson Sean Tucker is proudly carrying on his family’s legacy – he’s currently building the original Tucker Torpedo concept car. If you’d like to follow the project you can click here to follow him on Instagram.

Perhaps the most famous feature of the car was that central headlight, it gave additional illumination of course but it was originally designed to follow the steering – so it would light your way around corners.

 

This is the film poster for the 1988 movie “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” starring Jeff Bridges, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

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For Sale: A 1978 Porsche 924 Built To Safari Rally Specification

This is a 1978 Porsche 924 that has been rebuilt to classic Safari Rally specification, with lifted suspension, a wider track width, larger all-terrain tires, front-mounted spotlights, and a roof rack carrying a spare tire and sand ladders.

The Porsche 924 was raced regularly in-period, its aerodynamic styling and almost perfect weight distribution thanks to its rear-mounted transaxle made it a perfect choice for a variety of motorsport formats. and Porsche created two variants specifically for racing – the Carrera GT and Carrera GTR.

Fast Facts – The Porsche 924

• The Porsche 924 was originally developed by Porsche for Volkswagen. It was planned to be introduced as a VW sports car and it was designed with many VW and Audi parts including the engine and transmission.
• Volkswagen ultimately decided to axe the car quite late in the development cycle, Porsche bought the rights to the design, then released it as their own new entry level model to replace the Porsche 914.
• Though it was initially deemed to be underpowered, the 924 was praised for its styling, aerodynamics, and handling. Later versions like the 924 S and the 924 Turbo would significantly increase power. The Porsche 944 that came later was closely based on the 924.
• Special racing versions of the 924 were made including the Porsche 924 Carrera GT and the Porsche 924 Carrera GTR.

The Porsche That Was Almost A Volkswagen

Volkswagen hired Porsche in the early 1970s to build them a new affordably-priced sports car. They were instructed to use as many pre-existing parts as possible (including engines and transmissions), and it’s possible that the design of the car was influenced to some degree by the Volkswagen SP2 from Brazil.

A slew of modifications and upgrades have been applied to this 924 to bring it up to Safari Rally specification, among other changes it now rides on lifted suspension and Toyo all-terrain tires.

Due to a number of factors including the 1973 Oil Crisis, VW decided not to proceed with the project quite late in its development. Porsche negotiated to buy the design, a deal was struck, and Porsche further developed the car as a replacement for their outgoing 914 model.

The Porsche 924 has long been viewed as a somewhat undesirable vehicle due to its lower entry level price point and the lower power output of the original 1970s-era 924. In recent years they’ve been seeing their popularity begin to rise alongside the closely related Porsche 944.

Though it was never as desirable as the Porsche 911 or other exotics from the Stuttgart-based automaker like the 944 Turbo, the Porsche 924 played a key role in keeping the company in business through the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

150,000+ examples of the 924 were sold which brought in much needed capital, and the model is remembered today as the first front-engined Porsche, the first Porsche powered by a liquid-cooled engine, and interestingly enough, the first Porsche offered with an automatic transmission.

The interior of this 924 has been significantly modified, with Auto Style bucket seats and harnesses, a hydraulic handbrake, VDO gauges, a Vigor steering wheel, a fire extinguisher, and retrofitted toggle switches.

The 1978 Porsche 924 Safari Shown Here

The car you see here is a significantly modified 1978 Porsche 924, it’s been built to Safari-specification, a reference to the great African safari rallies.

The team behind this car integrated a range of modifications to bring the car up to Safari Rally standard, the suspension has been lifted, the track width increased with spacers, and Toyo all-terrain tires have been fitted to the original 15 inch mesh alloy wheels.

A roof rack has been added up top, it carries a spare tire and a pair of sand ladders, presumably for use in the Sahara. Martini Racing livery has been added to the outside and hefty spotlights have been installed up front.

Inside the car you’ll find Auto Style bucket seats, D1 Spec race harnesses, OMP footwell plates, VDO gauges, a black Vigor steering wheel, a hydraulic handbrake, a fire extinguisher, and a number of retrofitted toggle switches.

The car is currently being sold in a live online auction on Collecting Cars, and at the time of publishing there are a few days left to bid. You can click here if you’d like to read more or register to bid.

Images courtesy of Collecting Cars

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