Picture this: it is a nice, sunny day in 1954. All is quiet and peaceful…right up until the ground starts to rumble with the the pulsations of something heavy coming close. Soon, you see it…you can’t miss it. Painted orange, with red grilles and sporting rolling stock like you have never seen before, you’d swear that those folks in New Mexico had indeed learned something from the aliens and were putting it to good use. As it ambled along at highway speeds, you had to rub your eyes to come to terms with what you just saw. Was that a tractor? No, couldn’t be…tank? But there’s no gun. Surely, that wasn’t someone’s idea of a car, now was it?

What you are looking at is the Marmon-Herrington Rhino, a brainchild of Elie Aghnides. Those massive front wheels weighed in at three-quarters of a ton each, and together with the back wheels would allow the Rhino to float in water, or if it sank into the mire, would provide enough friction surface to allow the Rhino to just keep moving forward. The goal was to push the Rhino as an alternative concept to a tank, and potentially to be used in northern latitudes of Canada and beyond, were roads simply didn’t exist. The Army wasn’t interested…they figured that if a wheel was shot, the flotation part would be lost. And finding commercial buyers or private buyers had to be an interesting affair.Could you imagine one of these working a field today?