Gerry Moore gets a lot of strange looks when he's out driving his Ford Expedition.

People roll down their windows, stick their phones out and take photos. Others slam on the brakes to do a double-take. Pedestrians walking by stand open-mouthed, then quickly reach into their bags to get their cameras.

Gerry is a good-looking guy, always wearing a white sailor's cap and he usually has a cigar dangling from his lips. His wife, Karen, is blonde and beautiful, and is usually sitting in the passenger's seat, waving at onlookers. Maybe that's why everyone wants to take photos.

Or perhaps it's because Gerry sawed off the top half of his Ford Expedition and replaced it with the top half of a 1986 Chris Craft Scorpion 210, an old boat he had sitting in his backyard for years.

"It definitely gets a reaction out of people," Gerry says with a laugh. "Everybody smiles, they really do."

"It's such a joy to see people's reactions," Karen says. "They either have their camera out, or they're smiling and waving. Many of them just bust out laughing."

Yes, it drives just like a car, and no, it doesn't float

Gerry first got the idea to build his "boat car," as he calls it, at a car show in Mississippi late last year.

He saw a similar, smaller car/boat hybrid, and thought of the old Chris Craft he had sitting in his backyard off of Nine Mile Road in Pensacola. He'd been mulling refurbishing the boat for years, but never got around to spending the money to bring it back to life.

"So when I saw that boat car, I told my wife, 'That's what we're doing with our boat,'" Gerry says. "She said, 'I don't know how you are going to do that.'"

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Gerry, who works as a poker dealer at the Pensacola Greyhound Track, grew up fixing cars with his dad in Little Rock, Arkansas. His dad owned several car service stations, and Gerry has always been comfortable tinkering with automobiles.

But his boat car project was one that he'd never done before. He measured his Cadillac Escalade and his boat and determined they'd be the perfect fit for one another, but Karen wouldn't let him chop the Escalade to pieces. So he found an old Ford Expedition that had front end damage and bought it for cheap.

"I didn't mind that it had front end damage," Gerry says. "I cut the whole front end off anyways."

Gerry worked for six weeks merging the boat and car together — "That Chris Craft was built a little too good, I went through about 20 saws just to get the bottom off," he says — and eventually his masterpiece was complete. The boat car has the wheels, bottom frame, seats and steering wheel of the Expedition, but the body of the Chris Craft. It seats eight people and gets about 20 miles to the gallon.

And no, it doesn't float.

Gerry and Karen took the boat car, which they named "Tsunami," for its first spin in Pensacola on Feb. 15, and the farthest he's driven since then is to Panama City and back. The boat car operates and drives just like an SUV and is licensed and insured as the Expedition. Gerry says he's been pulled over by the police "around 10 times" — but instead of writing him a ticket, they snap a picture.

"It's considered a Ford Expedition, with a slight body modification," he says with a laugh.

A lot of looks, laughs and smiles from perfect strangers

So, what's the point of spending six weeks creating a boat/car hybrid that Gerry and Karen just drive around for fun?

They both say it's the reactions they get from people that make it worthwhile.

Gerry survived thyroid cancer that metastasized to his lungs, and Karen is a two-time breast cancer survivor. They both still work, and are busy with three kids and nine grandkids. But they enjoy driving the boat car around in their free time, taking photos with people and giving rides to people to see the joy that it brings.

"I can have a rough day at work, and when I get home, he'll say, 'Let's go for a ride,'" Karen says.

Gerry ordered several captains hats, like the one he wears, to give out to little kids who are fascinated by the boat car. One interaction with a little girl at a car show a few weeks ago still makes him tear up when he talks about it.

"There was a little girl who had leukemia, so I put her in the boat and gave her a captain's hat," Gerry says. "Seeing a reaction like that in a child is no different than seeing these bums on the corner who have no food or anything else. Everybody's response is to wave and smile, and it just makes their day. And more importantly, it makes ours."

"It tickles them to death to see the boat," Karen says of the little kids. "And to have a hat like he has, that makes it so much more special."

The Moores are open to the idea of letting people "rent" the boat car (with Gerry as its captain) for weddings or other events. It made its first big public debut at the Pensacola Grand Mardi Gras parade in March.

But for the most part, the Moores aren't looking to make a monetary profit off their ride. The reward they get from it is driving down Palafox Street and having people stop on the sidewalks to take photos, or pulling up next to people at stoplights and having the cars next to them roll down their windows to ask questions and laugh. The boat car makes people happy — and that's what makes Gerry and Karen happy, too.

"One time we pulled in by the beach ball (water tower) here on Pensacola Beach," Gerry says. "And seven Marines came up to me and said, 'You just made our whole vacation.' You can't put a price on reactions like that."

To learn more about the boat car or to contact Gerry and Karen, visit Boat Car's Facebook page.

Annie Blanks can be reached at ablanks@pnj.com or 850-435-8632.