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The first known self-propelled amphibious vehicle was demonstrated by United States inventor Oliver Evans in 1804.
Many modern tanks and armored personnel carriers have an amphibious mode in which a fabric skirt adds buoyancy, and the tracks provide motive power. The Sherman Dual Drive tank used in the D-Day invasion had this setup.
The most famous such vehicle in World War II was the DUKW Amphibious Truck. It was deployed in the Pacific theatre to establish and supply beachheads. It was designed as a wartime project by Sparkman and Stephens , the famous yacht design firm.
Second best known is the German Schwimmwagen designed by the Porsche engineering firm in 1938 and widely used throughout the war. The amphibious bodywork was designed by Erwin Komenda, the firm's body construction designer, using the engine and drive train of the KübelwagenKubelwagen is an abbreviation from Kubelsitzwagen which literally means "bucket seat car". It was a generic name for open-topped military utility cars fitted with bucket seats. The word Kubelwagen is widely used in reference to the Volkswagen 82, a milita.
Several amphibious automobileAn automobile usually called a car (an old word for carriage) or a truck is a wheeled vehicle that carries its own engine. Older terms include horseless carriage and motor car with "motor" referring to what is now usually called the engine. The act of opes have been developed, including the AmphicarThe Amphicar was a German automobile designed by Hans Trippel and built from 1961 to 1965. The car, manufactured by the Quandi Group at Lubeck and at Berlin-Borsigwalde, was amphibious, featuring an English 1147 cc Triumph four-cylinder engine that had 38 in the 1960s and the contemporary Aquada .
See also amphibious assault shipThe amphibious assault ships usually shortened to amphibs denotes a range of classes of warship employed to land and support ground forces on enemy territory by an amphibious assault. The largest fleet of these types is operated by the United States Navy.