Aerocar

[Barbo]

Hi....these are photos of the original Aerocar, at Kissimmee, Florida....Above and Beyond......Barbo

Edited December 31, 2008 by Barbo

[LUKE'57]

Sign said "World's Only Flying Car", didn't any of the Pintos survive?

[Joe Handley]

Sign said "World's Only Flying Car", didn't any of the Pintos survive?

Depends on how hard they were backed into the tails

Speaking of which, that thing looks like it's been knocked around pretty hard itself!

Edited December 31, 2008 by Joe Handley

[Harold]

Is that you in the pic. or is that the pilot after yet another crash landing? Any landing you can walk away from is a good one....

[Art Anderson]

Sign said "World's Only Flying Car", didn't any of the Pintos survive?

IIRC, there was but one Pinto converted to a flying car, by having mounts installed in the roof for securing Cessna 182 wings, and flying struts, along with an empennage and engine nacelle. That test unit crashed, killing the test pilot and co-pilot, and the project was not revived afterward. In addition, there were a couple more experimental flying cars built, and test-flown, the first one (which predates the Aerocar in this thread, BTW, that being the Convair Air-Car, by the maker of the famed B-24 bombers of WW-II. Convair's was a very streamlined subcompact sedan, purpose built, which also suffered a test-flight crash, after which, Convair backed out of further development. In the 70's, about the time of the flying Pinto, there was another experimental flying car, built around a Honda Civic, but that project never went anywhere.

The claim made regarding the Molt Taylor Aerocar shown in the opening post in this thread is absolutely correct. Molt Taylor, a Seattle-area designer, developed this concept, built 5 or 7 examples over the time period 1948 into the late 1960's, but was never able to raise the capital to go into even limited production. However, the particular Aerocar in this thread had an FAA Airworthiness Certificate as late as 1995 or 1996, when it was flown from Seattle WA to Oshkosh WI for that year's annual EAA fly-in.

Of all the flying car ideas, Aerocar was the only one that was completely that, a wheel-driven flying automobile, in which the same engine provided both power to the pusher propellor, and for ground travel, to the wheels. For driving, the empennage section of the vehicle, along with the propellor, were removed, along with the wing panels and their struts, and strapped together into a "trailer", which when hitched to the back of the car itself, made an entire unit that rolled down the highway. Taylor advertised that setup for flying, and teardown for driving, took only about 15 minutes, and if you didn't want to take your wings and tail with you, you could just park those parts, as an un-hitched trailer, either at the airport, or in your own garage or home hangar (South of Kokomo IN, on Indiana SR-25, just west of its intersection with US-31, there is a subdivision development, laid out along that state highway, with a grass runway about 2500' long, the idea being homes for private pilots, AND their airplanes--Aerocar was envisioned for that sort of living).

The Aerocar in the pics above is painted in the colors of the one owned and flown by the late comedian, Bob Cummings. Cummings flew his plane in the trailers for his daytime TV sitcom of 1958-about 1960, "The Bob Cummings Show", with long time laundry detergent spokeswoman, Rosemary DeCamp. The colors are those of the vitamin supplement company who sponsored Cummings' TV show.

So yeah, the story board in the picture is correct, it is the only flying car around.

As for the plastic "model", that is actually a promotional toy produced by Gladden Industries, of Port Huron MI. It's 1/24 or 1/25 scale, and was made to be played with, it sets up and tears down just like the real Aerocar. These were made in acetate plastic, like almost every plastic toy in the 50's, for the shatterproof qualities of acetate, but with the same warpage characteristics of any pre-1961 AMT promotional model car.

Art

[Barbo]

The one standing next to the Aerocar is mi, Miguel Barbosa..........Above and Beyond...........Barbo