Hello!
This is an amphibian pedal driven "car" propelled by the two finnish lads Reino Karpio and Matti Näränen. In the summer of 1949 they crossed the Baltic sea, island-jumping through the archipelago of Finland, Åland an Sweden. The journey started in Helsingfors and ended in Stockholm, a total of 400 km, both on land and water.
The crossing over open sea west of Åland could have gone really bad, since the compass failed due to all the metal in the cyclecar. The goal was to participate in a sports event in Stockholm, one truly disater from the beginning to the end. The organizer ended his life from a famous building in Stockholm when the whole project went bankcrupt.
The took the ordinary ferry back to Helsingfors. The cycle car (which didn´t have a proper name) was sold to a sporting goods but later found cut into two pieces. The project did survive in one sense – the cycle car was sold a a drawing and at least two are reported being built in the 1950´s.
Please let me know if you want to know more, maybe I´ll write the full story some time in another section.
Regards
cljo
