Rinspeed creates underwater scuba car

In The Spy Who Loved Me, James Bond takes his sports car underwater making it a scuba car, swaps his wheels for fins and fires a missile that knocks a pursuing helicopter out of the sky.

Roger Moore's feats as the iconic British spy may be difficult to match, but a Swiss company says it has created a vehicle that really can turn into a submarine - though without the firearms.

The concept scuba car developer Rinspeed calls its "sQuba" the first real submersible car. Unlike military vehicles, which can only drive slowly on a lakebed, Rinspeed says its car can provide a stable "flight" at a depth of 10 metres.

"For three decades I have tried to imagine how it might be possible to build a car that can fly underwater," says Frank Rinderknecht, Rinspeed's 52-year-old CEO and a professed Bond fan. "Now we have made this dream come true."

Passengers will be able to keep breathing underwater through an integrated tank of compressed air similar to what is used in scuba diving. But they will get wet.