Family & craft
People behind WaterCar.
Four generations of Marches. A Southern California community of builders.
The family that builds these boats still uses them together. Around the Fountain Valley shop is a culture of people who make things, test them and make them better.
WaterCar leadership.
Michael March
CEO & Co-founder
Dave March
Founder & President
The original March. Still at the wheel at 97 years old.
Driveway. Ramp. Open water. Swipe or use the arrows to see all four photos.
Dave’s father, John “Bumpa” March, worked on Air Force helicopters at Los Alamitos and spent years flying and fixing private airplanes. He was there for the first WaterCar prototype. Building things that move runs deep in this family.
At 97, he is still in the driver’s seat. From the driveway to the ramp to open water, these photographs show four generations of Marches aboard. The family that built it still uses it together.
The right people were close to home.
WaterCar grew up among Southern California’s boat builders, car designers, desert racers, surfboard shapers, sportfishers and aircraft builders. When a problem crossed disciplines, Dave could call on people who had spent their lives solving a part of it.
Six industries. One Southern California coastline.
The family’s Cole boat, the performance hulls of Eliminator and Hallett, and the builders who understood how a hull gets onto plane.
A local culture of custom cars and hand-built prototypes, with Metalcrafters working a mile from the WaterCar shop.
The family’s dune buggies and sand cars taught lessons in suspension travel. Early WaterCars used custom King Shocks built nearby.
Dave shaped boards as a kid, and Michael followed. Fiberglass, resin and foam were familiar materials long before the first WaterCar.
Family weekends at Havasu and trips to Catalina kept the purpose clear: build something people would want to spend a day aboard.
Aircraft builders
John worked on helicopters. Dave earned his pilot’s license at seventeen and rebuilt airplanes. The family flew the machines it worked on.
Legends of the coast.
These builders helped define the Southern California world around WaterCar, from performance boats and desert racers to aircraft and concept cars.
Bob Leach
Founder of Eliminator Boats, called the Godfather of West Coast custom boating – he set the look and the speed of an era of performance boats.
John Crean
Built Fleetwood Enterprises into the largest recreational-vehicle manufacturer in the world – a titan of American manufacturing.
Jack Cole
Founded Skipjack in 1966; his sportfishers were rugged enough to chase marlin in open ocean yet trailer to Baja – more than four thousand built.
Bill Poole
Built the first true long-range sportfishers, opening the deep banks off Baja to anyone willing to make the run.
Gil George
Founder of Funco, the legendary off-road buggy builder whose long-travel desert racers helped define the Baja 1000 and the dune-buggy era.
Bruce Meyers
Built the Meyers Manx in Fountain Valley – and, first, a fibreglass monocoque, a body that was its own frame. A WaterCar finishes that idea in welded aluminum.
King Shocks
Garden Grove shock builder and official shock of the Baja 1000. King machined custom sets to WaterCar spec – the desert’s hardest parts, a five-minute drive away.
The Gaffoglio family
Their Metalcrafters, a mile from the shop, hand-built the concept and show cars Detroit revealed on its biggest stages – the Dodge Viper, the Plymouth Prowler.