This landing craft lets you take your ute along for the ride
Love your ride as much as your boat? Never leave it behind with the Hard Drive marine landing craftLove your trade ute as much as you love your car? Suzuki Marine has teased a US boat brand called Hard Drive Marine that allows you to combine both your passions in the one package.
Hard Drive Marine builds specialised alloy landing craft that are cleverly designed to easily swallow a US-sized pick-up truck and take it anywhere there’s a sandy or rocky beach to land it on.
The vessels are powered using up to three Suzuki outboard engines.
A video shows one of the landing craft with a trio of high-performance 300hp Suzuki outboards blasting around with the ute on board.
The landing craft even has a skeleton console that folds out of the way to allow a vehicle to squeeze past while it is loading or unloading.
The Hard Drive Marine landing craft have a clever locking system built into their hydraulic-lift landing platform in the bow that allows the boat to creep up or down a beach once it has nudged up to the shoreline.
The “Maxgate” landing platform is so clever that Hard Drive Marine even has footage of the pick-up truck transferring from one landing craft to another – all while out in open water.
Even better, the system can be controlled via remote control, so you don’t even have to be onboard if the tide ebbs and you need to nudge it back to the waterline.
“Our unique line of vessels, designed as working service boats, eliminates the need for docking and ferrying on rugged, remote coastlines,” Hard Drive Marine says.
“Conventional landing craft has one inherent drawback; to achieve a beach landing they use a low chine and a shallow deadrise to get closer to shore.
“This design works for loading and unloading but stops the boat from running and performing well at any speed when water conditions are choppy or rough.
“We have designed our custom aluminum landing craft to run in all conditions and deliver when and where you need it.”
Miss your comforts? One version of the boat includes a cabin that slides fore and aft, so while empty you can steer from a forward position, and while loaded steer from an aft position.
Want one? Unfortunately, the landing craft is only available in the US at the moment.
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