I’m pretty sure someone must have compiled all of the flying cars that we were promised over the decades, but here’s another addition to the ones I’ve seen.
It’s just a “5-Minute, 1-Woman Conversion Time”, and off takes Mommy for a quick visit to that hair salon in the next big town. Or take her kids to see grandma.
One of these centuries. Actually, this one, almost surely.
I actually saw a flying car at the Barrett Jackson auction a few years ago. I don’t remember the brand name.
Any day now it will be the future. 😉
As far as these things go, this one looks more or less airworthy (I’m sure someone here will have a more informed opinion than “looks”) and if one were into driving a relatively tiny oddly suspended and steered car on the highway in 1949, well, I guess that would work too. And yet…Mom would have needed to have a pilot’s license, an interest in flying most places that she could drive instead, and also to live pretty close to an airport. Yeah, no wonder that this concept didn’t take off.
I’ll also note that Danbury Airport – where the Airphibian’s corporate hq was based is now next to a gigantic shopping mall (built on the site of the former Danbury Fairgrounds). It’s at the confluence of a number of large highways, parkways, and I84. There’s a lot more traffic on the roads there than there is in the air.
Speaking of Danbury, here’s a nice PR shot of an Airphibian doing some shopping in the Wooster Village neighborhood of Danbury:
Hummph. I would have much rather had the Airphibian than the Chevy van that shows up in more recent pictures. 🙂
(plus a grocery store seems more useful than a prom/wedding dress store. but so it goes.)
I agree on both counts!
Imagine how things would be if only 5% of today’s 275 million registered vehicles in the U.S. were added to the 204,405 registered aircraft. With most of the additional 13.75 million aircraft being piloted under VFR (visual flight rules).
And since a majority of today’s drivers – of any gender – know how to change a flat tire or jump start a vehicle with a dead battery, I also shudder to think about how many times the four steps to convert the Airphibian would be completed incorrectly, despite having “foolproof” connectors and safety switches.
Oops…meant to type most DON’T know how to jump start a vehicle, or change a flat tire.
WOW! Now I can fly to Daytona Beach, land, and drive to a bar where I can meet hot babes! Anyway, it’s time that I trade in my ’49 Dodge Meadowbrook sedan.
This particular flying car is currently restored and in the National Air and Space Museum. It must have moved there recently as I don’t recall seeing it at the main museum in DC. It appears that it will be on display when that museum reopens after renovation. Lots of detail on this pretty remarkable vehicle on the Smithsonian website.
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/fulton-airphibian-fa-3-101/nasm_A19600127000
In the early 1980s, one of my restoration shop guys also worked part-time for the Smithsonian Institution at their Paul Garber annex and restoration facility, and he arranged for a small group of us to tour the place. He pointed out a major design achievement for assembling the 2 main components of the Airphibian. He said the various pilot controls at the back of the car section pushed against matching spring-loaded levers on the plane section, and did not require manual attachment of the controls, once the sections were together. This was part of the effort to simplify the conversion process, and when an electrical push button switch next to the control levers was fully closed, it meant all the controls were operational.
Not only did we get to see one of these up close, we also were able to walk inside the disassembled Enola Gay bomber*, and see the only surviving WW2 Japanese bomber that was to be loaded into a submarine, then near the US west coast, off-loaded & assembled so it could bomb California cities [it was equipped with a Daimler V-16]. I think he said there were 8 airplanes on each of the 3 subs, and just before the sub arrived near the US, the war ended.
The Airphibian is now on display in the Smithsonian’s Air & Space museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. [Wikipedia indicates it’s at the SI Hudvar-Hazy facility next to Dulles Airport.] Here’s the link to the exhibit:
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/fulton-airphibian-fa-3-101/nasm_A19600127000
*About 10 years ago I bought most of the AP Photographer William Gorey’s 8×10 photo collection, and inside I found a photo of the Enola Gay, taken in 1959, as it sat in pieces in a field of tall grass near the Museum Annex, totally unprotected from the weather!
In the 1980s my girlfriend owned a Cessna 174 Skyhawk. She had a full VR pilot’s license, and I had been working on mine. She arranged a deal with the local county airport to lease it to them for their flying school, and they did all the maintenance and certifications. We used it maybe 3 to 6 times a month, and always in the central 1/3 of the USA’s east coast.
We lived about 4 hours by car from the Atlantic beaches, by air that could be cut in half, so we often flew to Ocean City, MD to have lunch and spend a couple of hours at the beach before heading home. For a while I kept an old 1963 Chevy wagon parked at the Ocean City airport, but after vandals broke the glass out, I ended up junking the wagon.
Here’s the reality of owning a light plane to use as a second method of transportation: For car travel less than 2 hours each way, most people simply use the car. The costs of maintaining a light plane, including the cost of renting an outdoor parking spot for the plane can be very expensive. Indoor spaces can get very expensive, depending on the airport.
If you love being a pilot and flying, then consider buying a plane, but if you’re basic reason to fly is to make short trips to conserve your time, by the time one considers the time to/from the airport [both ends of the trip], taxi or car rental costs, many former plane owners say it simply isn’t worth the additional time & expensed. Most people I know who still own a plane, also live on enough flat land to have their own private grass runway & a basic hanger..
There are some housing developments built for aircraft owners; the homes are on either side of a runway and each home has a hangar as well as a garage.
I used to live in Parkland Estates Airpark in Colorado, a community of fly-in home sites having taxi easements radiating from a paved 4,200 foot runway. All the houses had very large attached garages to accommodate a light airplane. The residents were mostly oil field guys who had to fly to different, distant fracking sites every day. I flew in some homebuilts out of that field. It was fun.
Didn’t one of “Olive Oyl’s”, cars look a bit like this?
As far as nesting dual-purpose vehicles go, this one is still my favorite:
This will never happen because the first big smashup over a crowded city with the consequent casualties will kill the idea. One reason why you won’t be able to fly anywhere, like drones.
Mr. Fulton also invented the “Sky Hook” recovery system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system which would pluck a downed pilot or evading spy off the ground inota low flying aircraft.