Flying Cars

by Andrew Glass

  Daniel Zuck (LEFT) and Stanley Whitaker pose with their invention.

  The innovative flexible wings, unlike the fixed wings of conventional aircraft, adjusted smoothly to air currents, preventing stalls and softening the ride like shock absorbers on a car. Ingenious airbrakes slowed the Plane-Mobile in flight, much like braking a car, for accurate landings. Zuck’s design also limited the potential for steep dives in order to prevent users from indulging in the sort of barnstorming that required more skill than an inexperienced commuter pilot would likely possess. The Plane-Mobile revived the tricycle design, with retractable wheels of the sort that engineers considered adequate for a roadable airplane.

  Zuck’s invention was designed unconventionally, even by flying car standards, to fly like a car and drive like a wingless plane. Admittedly, trying to use a Plane-Mobile as a conventional car rather than as a unique form of personal transportation would defeat its purpose. But the “floating wings” that adjusted to air currents and prevented stalls and spins had made the Plane-Mobile a finalist in the 1944 “Plane You’d Most Like to Own” contest in Popular Science Monthly.

  The 1948 Cadillac was the first car to feature tail fins that resembled an airplane’s. By the late 1950s, most automobile designs looked like flying machines. Zuck believed that the popularity of “airplanes without wings,” as he called them, reflected a longing by motorists to convert grueling hours commuting on crowded highways to a daily adventure in the clouds. “The modern car,” he wrote, “has slavishly imitated the airplane in almost everything except the wings. Why fly so low? Low flying is the most dangerous kind of flying. You already have an imitation airplane in your garage, so let’s put wings on it and make the modern automobile fully functional, take the car off the road and fly where the flying is safe in the wide blue yonder.” Zuck advocated using existing roads as runways for landing and taking off. In dangerous flying weather, of course, a pilot could fold his wings and drive on the roads instead.

  Zuck predicted that a Plane-Mobile parked curbside would become a commonplace sight in the suburbs.

  In his self-published 1958 book, An Airplane in Every Garage, Zuck advanced an innovative vision that harked back to the optimistic predictions of future cities from the turn of the century. He foresaw driver/pilots commuting to reorganized downtowns that featured runways for landing and access streets that allowed roadable airplanes with folded wings to zip right to workplace parking lots. He also envisioned a more advanced Plane-Mobile, aptly called Advanced Model, with simple steering-wheel control rather than rudder pedals, and with power-operated automatically folding wings. “Auto building will become a lost art,” he predicted, “replaced by personal airplane builders as soon as a worker can fly to work.” As an added bonus, with no cars on the roads, “[traffic] congestion evaporates literally into thin air.”

  During the calamity of the Great Depression, Buckminster Fuller had envisioned a tranquil Dymaxion future with Dymaxion cars transporting happy modern families to prefabricated, self-sufficient Dymaxion houses. Zuck, in the postwar era of unprecedented affluence and optimism, predicted the opposite: an uncertain, fearful future shaped by the Cold War. His belief in an imminent nuclear attack by the Soviet Union added a unique urgency to his engineering quest for a flying car. In the 1950s, he wrote that his Plane-Mobile could provide the means to strategically scatter the population, thus denying the enemy congested urban centers as targets. In the event of a nuclear attack, driver pilots could scramble to evacuate threatened communities in their Plane-Mobiles. Far-flung suburban/rural Plane-Mobile commuters would already reside beyond the range of the initial impact and the radiation to follow. “Families will be far from dangerous military targets,” Zuck assured his readers. “The threat of the hydrogen bomb to our lives and our homes will be minimized.”

  A roadable folding airplane that fit easily into an ordinary two-car garage would make a quick escape possible in the event of an attack.

  From the perspective of the twenty-first century, Zuck’s plan to replace congested highways with a sky full of rush-hour commuters and his expectation that a population under attack would evacuate in their Plane-Mobiles seem naive. But his ideas must be understood in the context of backyard bomb shelters and “duck-and-cover drills,” in which schoolchildren routinely practiced taking shelter under their desks as a defense against the effects of a hydrogen bomb. In the panicky atmosphere of the 1950s, converting roads to runways might be seen as a realistic solution. All it required was a small airplane that could be folded up and driven like a car, and Zuck had already invented one. “People will be able to take advantage of living in the quieter, less expensive country,” he promised. “Peace and joy will surely follow.”

  Two prototypes of the Plane-Mobile were built and, until recently, were stored in a hangar in Palmdale, California. Another may be seen at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania.

  15

  Moulton B. Taylor’s Aerocar

  Moulton B. Taylor (1912–1995) was born at the right time for an aeronautical pioneer. Nine years earlier, the Wright brothers had motored 200 feet through the air. According to established aviation history (the Gustave Whitehead controversy notwithstanding), the Wright brothers’ flight forever debunked the notion that flying machines were a fantasy. By the time Taylor began flying model airplanes with the Boy Scouts in the open fields west of Longview, Washington, real airplanes such as the Curtiss Jenny had proven their viability over the toxic trenches of Europe in World War I. And the price of a brand-new Ford flivver had dropped to below $300.

  In 1926, Taylor watched barnstorming pilots roar out of the clouds and bounce their beat-up old Jennys and Hisso Standards across the bumpy field. The barnstormers were mostly experienced World War I pilots, and some adventurous women, too. They performed dangerous stunts in reconditioned (which often just meant repainted) biplanes bought at auction. Taylor sold tickets, leveled landing strips, pumped gas, and washed airplanes—likely in exchange for flying lessons, because on his sixteenth birthday he was ready to solo for a pilot’s license. With some buddies, he bought an old Hisso Standard, and he flew it when he had gas money.

  After college, Taylor entered Naval Aviation Cadet training. Later, in South America, he flew catapult-launched scout planes off cruisers.

  In 1939, electronic navigational equipment, which used radio signals to guide aircraft when visibility was poor, was too expensive for small-plane owners. Taylor invented the Taylor AirPhone, a portable battery-powered navigational device. It attracted the attention of the navy brass, and Taylor was recalled into military service for a top-secret project. In 1942, he guided the first surface-to-surface missile to its target using a developing technology called television. The navy encouraged Commander Taylor to make weapons development his career, but Taylor declined. “I just decided not to spend the rest of my life making things to kill people,” he said later. “I’m an idealist and admit it.”

  Taylor’s first sketch for a flying car.

  Taylor’s ambition in 1946 was to manufacture a small sport plane with flotation wings, to be called the Duckling. That is, until he saw Robert E. Fulton Jr. and his widely publicized Airphibian. “I thought what a good idea, but I can do better,” Taylor wrote later. He returned to an idea he’d sketched in 1945 and resolved to invent a vehicle that converted from airplane to automobile without leaving any parts behind.

  His father, back in Longview, offered to help him find investors to finance his dream. Taylor suspected it might be a ruse to lure him home and talk some sense into him. Nonetheless, he convinced fifty business leaders to risk $1,000 each on his plan to build a flying car that would transport its driver and passenger as efficiently as an airplane but with the versatility of an automobile. “If the whole idea is to go where you please when you please,” Taylor asserted, “then leaving behind the flight components is a less than optimal solution.”

  Taylor built this egg-shaped model to show investors.

  P
ilots would be able to land and drive through bad weather and take off again when the skies cleared. It was the same advantage René Tampier had promoted for his Avion-Automobile back in 1921. But Taylor was talking about a sporty little car, not a collapsible airplane that bumped down the street backward. Within a year, he promised, he’d drive an automobile to a nearby airstrip and then fly it back to Longview. He assured his investors that “the changeover from plane to automobile would be clean and easy enough for a woman in a fur coat with high heels.”

  Taylor built a modern-looking factory/workshop beside a grass landing strip near the Columbia River. Where the wall jutted artfully above the roof, he announced the name of his dream: Aerocar. He had not studied engineering—his university degree was in business—so he recruited two aircraft engineers, Charlie Kitchell and Art Robinson. Jess Minnick, an aircraft mechanic, was hired on too. He’d busted himself up back in 1919 after attaching wings to his motorcycle to see if it would fly. (It wouldn’t.) Since then, he’d earned a reputation as a mechanical wizard who could fabricate anything. Taylor never took all the credit for the Aerocar. “There was no one person in charge of it and none of the parts were drawn up until we had something in hand,” he said later, “so it was a kind of build and do.”

  The Aerocar team had many of the same objectives as “easy airplane” engineers in the Vidal competition of the early 1930s: a comfortable, automotive-style cabin with at least enough room for two adults and 100 pounds of baggage, flight controls as simple as a car’s dashboard, and wide visibility.

  Earlier engineers had designed small airplanes to fold or disassemble so that they could go for a short spin on the road. But a folding airplane, even a cool little Plane-Mobile, didn’t meet Taylor’s criterion of a genuine automobile with four automobile tires. He would create a brand-new breed of door-to-door vehicle, more practical than Robert Fulton’s bouncy Airphibian and even Ted Hall’s stylish ConvAirCar.

  Taylor rejected the popular notion of a helicopter sedan. While helicopter cars have the theoretical advantage of backyard takeoff and thus require no runway, a helicopter displaces enough air to blow the shingles off a roof and flatten the flowers in the garden. “You can be sure your neighbors would never let you do it again,” he said.

  “We don’t need a lot of complicated stuff, just a common sense gadget that will provide a usable practical little automobile and at the same time, unfold into a safe convenient airplane that you can drive over to the flying strip and fly to that other strip near Joe’s place.” So the Aerocar’s design essentially fused an existing easy-to-fly airplane called the Ercoupe, dating back to the easy-airplane competition of the 1930s and admired for its proven reliability, to a lightweight utilitarian Crosley sports car. Produced between 1939 and 1952, the Crosley sold at appliance stores for as little as $250.

  The Aerocar incorporated many features Taylor admired in the Airphibian’s design, but he felt that watching the pilot screw the detachable propeller back on before takeoff might undermine passenger confidence in the aircraft’s safety. However, he also knew that permanently mounted propeller blades would present a safety hazard on the street and that even a minor accident might make the propeller unsafe for flight. So the Aerocar team decided instead on a pusher (rear-mounted) propeller, like the one Waterman had used successfully for his Arrowbile. However, they positioned it at the end of a long cone so that the turbulent air it produced, called the propwash, would be left far behind the cabin. The cone angled upward for propeller-spin clearance and to keep the prop from whacking the ground on takeoff.

  A helicopter car in flight.

  Taylor wanted to combine a reliable, easy-to-fly Ercoupe with an inexpensive, lightweight Crosley to create a flying sports car.

  The engine, balanced in back of the cabin, vented exhaust and noise to the rear along with the unsettling propwash, making the Aerocar about as quiet and comfortable as an old Volkswagen Beetle. A Y-shaped tail, originally designed for a better fit in a suburban garage than a tall, thin tail, provided unexpected stability in the air. Acknowledging successful easy-to-fly airplane design elements dating from the 1930s, Taylor and his team positioned the Aerocar’s wings high and back, giving the pilot/driver a wide, unobstructed view. The flight controls were linked so that the plane would bank and steer by means of the conventional automobile steering wheel. In flight mode, the wheel automatically accommodated itself to aileron control, so the pilot pulled it back to go up or pushed it forward to go down. Rudder pedals were added later, giving the pilot the option of conventional airplane controls. But unlike a conventional airplane’s steering, the wheel swung back to center when released, like an automobile’s. This automatically leveled the plane in the air, eliminating a dangerous mishap for inexperienced pilots: the inclination of conventional aircraft to continue a turn, if not corrected, into a spin called a Dutch roll or, more ominously, a graveyard spiral.

  By the late 1940s, no respectable automobile came without headlights, parking and brake lights, a speedometer, an odometer, a good cabin heater with a three-speed blower, roll-down windows, windshield wipers, tinted sun visors, a radio, a rearview mirror, turn signals, a jack so the driver could fix a flat tire, a glove compartment, and a cigarette lighter and ashtray. The Aerocar had all of these features and also four-wheel independent suspension. The essential car horn doubled as a stall alarm. In the air, a flying car would also need airplane instruments: an airspeed indicator (in knots), an altitude indicator, a vertical speed (rate of climb) indicator, a compass, a turn and bank indicator, a hand throttle, a dual control stick, regulation flying lights, seat belts, a radio for use in flight, and a round airspeed indicator, clearly distinguishable from the long rectangular speedometer that showed ground speed. Yet by design the Aerocar’s dashboard, instrument panel, standard gearshift, brake, gas pedal, and clutch closely resembled those found in any conventional late 1940s automobile.

  The Aerocar I’s interior looked very much like the interior of a stylish compact car of its era.

  Preparing to demonstrate his experimental Aerocar, Taylor arrived at the Aerocar factory on December 8, 1949, with a trailered flight component in tow.

  Taylor’s team decided against a two-engine modular vehicle, like the ConvAirCar, in favor of a single engine with just one fuel gauge. The 143-horsepower Lycoming air-cooled aircraft engine they finally settled on gave the Aerocar a range of 500 miles in the air with a full forty-gallon tank. When the wings and tail were attached to the automobile, flight controls mechanically engaged by means of clusters of identical metal pads butting against each other. A lever in the cabin caused a particular pad in the cluster to respond, affecting the rudder, ailerons, and elevators. The automatic matching up of clusters also disengaged the rear brakes, allowing the rear wheels to roll freely for landing, and popped the rudder pedals into position. Five pins locked the wings and tail in place. And if somehow a connection was still improperly fastened, a red warning light flashed in the center of the instrument panel. Like the Airphibian’s engine, the Aerocar’s engine would not start until every part matched up securely in place for flight, including the supporting wing struts. Under the dashboard there was a backup switch for double-checking that the warning light was functioning properly, just in case.

  The primary innovation of the Aerocar that distinguished it from other prototypes, including Fulton’s Airphibian, was that once the wing struts were disengaged, the wings folded smoothly back alongside the fuselage and tail, supported by small wheels (later made retractable). The entire flight component could then be rolled into a garage and left there, allowing the driver to zip around in a nifty-looking sports car. Or the fuselage, wings, and tail could be towed, trailer-like, and later reattached at another landing strip.

  Driving into the sky.

  Just as Taylor had promised, Aerocar I was ready to roll on December 8, 1949. His backers—local businessmen, teachers, and doctors—gathered to see if their investment would fly. Taylor arrived for the trial run
driving what was later described in the Miami Herald as “one of the ugliest automobiles ever put together. . . . But never mind,” the article continued. “Here’s what Taylor would do; he’d drive this thing to the Kelso airport, put on the wings and fly back. That ought to prove the point, oughtn’t it? Which it certainly did. The investors were overjoyed.” Popular magazines proclaimed the Aerocar the transportation of the future. Taylor and his team doggedly continued perfecting the prototype. Jess Minnick described driving the Aerocar as “much like getting a good start on a drag strip with the difference that you just keep going, off, up and out over the crowd.”

  It took almost eight years and some seven hundred hours in the air, 20,000 miles on the road, and hundreds of structural tests before government inspectors at the Civil Aeronautics Authority unreservedly okayed Aerocar for mass production in December 1956. The Aerocar also complied with the motor vehicle codes in all the states that had them. An enthusiast wrote in 1957, “You can walk into the factory today, pay your money and drive out with a flying automobile. . . . With everything necessary for an airplane and a car, the interior has an attractive, uncluttered appearance. The Aerocar is fun to drive and gives a very acceptable jeep-like ride, with front-wheel drive and a top highway speed of 65.” A popular rock and roller, Chuck Berry, sang its praises in a song called “You Can’t Catch Me.”