Two men who are bidding to sail around Italy in a converted Maserati, painted pink and fitted with an outboard motor, are now fighting to persuade the Tuscan coastguard service to release their unique "car-boat" after it was confiscated for not being seaworthy, reports Italian news agency ANSA.

The coastguard intercepted, the two men, Marco Amoretti and Marcolino De Candia, off the coast of the Tuscan town of Forte dei Marmi on Monday after beach-goers had alerted them after seeing a car in the sea.

Worried the vehicle had ended up in the water by accident, a coastguard boat rushed to the scene to find Amoretti and De Candia in the waterproofed car, which has been equipped with an outboard motor and buoyant polyurethane to make it float.

The men explained they had set of from their hometown of Sarzana, near La Spezia, and were planning to circumnavigate the Italian coast to arrive in Venice.

But the coastguard was not amused when they found the Maserati-boat, which the men have named Miriam, did not have the necessary documents attesting to its seaworthiness nor any safety features. ''Considering the weather conditions, the fact that it was nearly dusk and the slow speed of the craft (two knots), the car-boat was escorted to to land, confiscated and fined,'' the coastguard said.

Amoretti and De Candia claim the self-built "car-boat" is perfectly safe and hope they can continue their journey around Italy. ''This isn't the first time we've done it,'' they told the coastguard. In 1999, amazingly, the pair crossed the Atlantic in a boat fashioned from a Ford Taurus and a Volkswagen Passat, leaving from the Canary Islands and arriving on the island of Martinique 119 days later.

Report: ANSA