By: Scott Way
Supercar Blondie has a habit of finding the neatest machines on land and water. We've chatted with her before about her experience driving the world's fastest police boat, and her team is back again with another unique boat. It sounds like she's got the boating bug.
A company in Dubai is bridging the cap between the automotive and marine industries by building some unique boats modeled after sports cars. Waterlink began four years ago with the development of four-wheelers that doubled as boats with on-water capability, and are now branching out with some even more fun ideas.
Their latest boat is modeled after a C7 Corvette, and the company has plans to build other boats resembling a Ford pickup, a Bugatti, and an Aston Martin. The premise behind building boats that look like cars isn't entirely new, but Waterlink might be the first to build full-size boats with respectable performance, rather than as a novelty platform.
The 1.8 litre 1800 CC engine gives the boat a top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph), which is impressive by any boating metric. The interior is a clever mix of automotive and marine features and includes a standard Corvette interior intermixed with boating amenities like cabin lights, running lights, windshield wipers, radar, and GPS. The boat operates much like a car, using a gas pedal on the floor, a gear shift between the seats, and a standard Corvette steering wheel. Like a Corvette the engine is mounted in the rear, and there are auto-inspired features like fake 'tires' that complete the realistic look of a Corvette on water.
If you happen to be in Dubai you can rent the Corvette boat for $700 hour, so it's not the cheapest ride, but you can also purchase one from Waterlink directly for a reasonable $40,000-$50,000, which is within range of the pricing for most new day boats.
That being said, it's not an entirely dry ride like a real day boat, it's a little more like a PWC, so you can expect some splashover. That's part of the fun, since no one should want a hardtop Corvette boat when they can have a convertible.
You can check out the Corvette C7 boat in the video below:
