This guy looks legit.
Fredericks (the makers of Cadbury products) built an amphibious ice cream van and sent it drifting down the River Thames for National Ice Cream Week in the UK (May 30th thru June 5th). It’s dubbed the “HMS Flake 99”, chimes Rod Stewart’s “We Are Sailing”, and has a top speed of five knots (5.8 mph). The van was thought up by stand-up comic David Mounfield, who won an online contest with the idea. The number of ice cream vans has fallen 75% in the UK over the past 50 years, partly due to local bans and higher licensing fees based on noise pollution complaints.
[Mounfield] said he’d had the idea for the amphibious ice cream van after hearing about the increasing number of exclusion zones set up by councils across the UK for ice cream vans. “There is also a lot of rivalry along the British seafronts so thought why not create an ice cream van that could take to the water and beat off the competition,” he said. [Newslite]
Beat off the competition? No, no, no. You’re supposed to do that to the unsuspecting customers lured to the garish colors and music. Also, that van has too many windows. Geez, you build a perfect getaway vehicle for rape vannin and then get all the details wrong. This is why we can’t have nice things, England.
On the next pages are a couple videos of the van and several pictures of it sailing past London landmarks like Battersea Power Station, Westminster Bridge, and the London Eye.
[Sources: CadburyIcecreamland, TaylorHerring via Nerdcore, Newslite, DPF]
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/FzvObzMBrRk?version=3&hl=en_US
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/LE2ybpAUJKI?version=3&hl=en_US