A 1960 Ford prototype military truck with a rear-mounted propeller and the ability to swim just surfaced on Bring a Trailer. It might be the weirdest thing the auction site has listed all year.
Designated the XM434E2, this 3.5-ton 6×6 cargo truck was Ford’s bid for a U.S. Army Ordnance Corps program that wanted medium-duty trucks capable of being air-dropped and driving straight into a river. General Motors and REO reportedly submitted competing prototypes. None of them won. The program was canceled before it ever left the prototype stage.
What remains is this one truck, a 20-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall aluminum-bodied beast sitting on a 126-inch wheelbase. Under the hood lives a 534-cubic-inch diesel V8 making 195 horsepower, mated to a six-speed manual transmission and a single-speed transfer case. A duplex-drive system splits power between the wheels and the propeller, depending on whether you’re on land or in the water.
The truck has spent most of the last five decades under restoration in some form or another. The current owner picked it up in 2023 as an incomplete project and has been trying to sell it since. That tells you something about the market for Cold War amphibious prototypes that don’t quite run right.
And this one does not quite run right. The fuel pump was recently overhauled but still needs tuning. The power steering and transfer case seals leak. The propeller driveshaft is missing entirely, which means the truck’s signature party trick is currently off the table.
The windshield wipers don’t work. The tires look cracked, though spares come with the sale.
It does have a Wisconsin title and a VIN identifying it as a 1960 model, so in theory you could register it for road use. Whether your local DMV office would know what to do with a truck that was designed to float across Soviet-contested rivers is another question.
Ford built its military credibility during World War II, producing more Jeeps than any other manufacturer and assembling B-24 Liberator bombers at its Willow Run plant. When the Cold War kicked off, defense contracts flowed freely, and Ford chased them. The XM434E2 was part of that push, born from an era when the Pentagon was willing to entertain almost any idea if it could be justified as a counter to the Soviets.
The truck never saw service. The program evaporated. Ford moved on. Six decades later, the company is still pitching its trucks to the military, though now it offers modified versions of the F-150 and Super Duty rather than bespoke amphibious prototypes with propellers bolted to the back.
Bring a Trailer built its reputation on listings like this, the kind of oddball hardware that traditional auction houses wouldn’t touch. The site has drifted toward overpriced Integras and supercar flips in recent years, but every so often something genuinely strange breaks through the noise.
No reserve price has been set. Bidding is active. Someone is going to own a truck that was designed to do two things at once and currently does neither of them particularly well.
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