Early Flying Car Designs

[hesham]

From Gee Bee's book.

 

[jcf]

That's a design for racing car not a flying car. It was intended as an entry for the Indianapolis 500 race,
the design was disqualified because it only had three wheels.

 

[hesham]

That's a design for racing car not a flying car. It was intended as an entry for the Indianapolis 500 race,
the design was disqualified because it only had three wheels.

Yes I know,but it was easy to switch into flying car.

 

[jcf]

It was never intended to be a flying car, so how could it be easy to turn it into one?

 

[publiusr]

Skid plates that slide out from underneath with balloon upper surface maybe?

 

[Charlesferdinand]

It was never intended to be a flying car, so how could it be easy to turn it into one?

Just drive it full throttle down the Hunaudières straight

 

[1946]

How about the German Ambi-Budd 'flying car'. Shown off at a Berlin airplane show.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Well, not exactly "early" but early enough I thought it should be included for the humor aspect, is the AVE Mizar. The company had chose to base theirs on a Ford Pinto

Testing ended in a fiery crash. Somewhat apropos for using a Ford Pinto...

 

[Nicknick]

How about the German Ambi-Budd 'flying car'. Shown off at a Berlin airplane show.

Intresting, but it doesn't look like a real flying prototype and more like a mock up model. Surly it was planded as a Gyrocopter, but I wonder why it is missing the rear propeller on every photo...

Edit: Now that I wrote the text about it, I realized this was quite insane and would have never worked! The small rear fin would have had to counteract the torque of the driven rotor ! Thrust was inteded to be produced by the small wings on the end of the blades, pably they took inspiration from the Voith Schneider Propeller.

 

[1946]

Intresting, but it doesn't look like a real flying prototype and more like a mock up model. Surly it was planded as a Gyrocopter, but I wonder why it is missing the rear propeller on every photo...

Edit: Now that I wrote the text about it, I realized this was quite insane and would have never worked! The small rear fin would have had to counteract the torque of the driven rotor ! Thrust was inteded to be produced by the small wings on the end of the blades, pably they took inspiration from the Voith Schneider Propeller.

I think it also a gyrocopter. I thought it was funny that the writeup on it stated 'flying car.' At least it was made in 1:1 scale and on display, not simply a paper project.

 

[Nicknick]

Originally I gought it would be a gyrocopter, but it wasn't intended to be one. The rotor was driven (in theory...) and the end fins should have enable thrust. There was no tail rotor planed, so of course it wouldn't have worked.