Ever since man could both fly and drive there have been plenty of people who desired to have the ability to do both with the one vehicle. One such person was Aeronautical engineer Moulton (Molt) Taylor who dreamed of seeing the sky filled with flying cars so he set out to built his own flying car way back in 1949.
Officially known as the Aerocar Industries Aerocar, Molt set out to manufacture and produce his flying car design. While his car did not take the world by storm it was one of the more successful of flying car projects to ever get of the ground. Six prototypes were built in total between 1949 and 1966 and all obtain an airworthy certificate. Today all these planes are still around either in museums or in a private collectors hands. Of the six aerocars that were made only one of them is still able to fly, a 1956 built type 1 Aerocar which is owned by Ed Sweeney who first had a fly in an Aerocar back in the late 50’s, so in love with the car he eventually bought his own when one came up for sale and got it back in flying condition.
The Aerocar was designed as a two seat egg shaped car with a air cooled flat four engine that powered the front wheels, a power takeoff shaft headed to the back of the cabin where it would mate to the pusher propeller shaft that ran down the back of the detachable rear and wing section of the craft. This detachable section was fold-able and had it own wheels so you can tow it with you if you wanted but this would over double the length of the car. When it was time to fly you simply clipped on the back section and folded out the wings which clipped onto the roof and sides of the cabin via stays. If think that there would be some sacrifices to owning a flying car you would be correct, as a car it was not the most comfortable thing to drive even by 1950’s standards, adding to this a non syncromesh gearbox and a rather noisy engine made the cramped driving experience even more unpleasant.
The last prototype attempted to rectify many of the Aerocars dissues, known as the Aerocar 3, it was based an early model that had been damaged in a road accident. Molt Taylor rebuilt the car with a larger slightly more conventional looking body along with improvements the wheels that gave them the ability to retract into the body during flight. Today this Aerocar is located at Seattle’s Museum of Flight (pictured above).
Despite lots of interest at the time the Aerocar car never made it into commercial production, Moulton Taylor eventually turned his efforts into other aircraft projects some of which achieved much acclaim.
