The 10-horsepower, 650-lb Airway of 1949 was a long shot at best for the postwar American new car market. 

As improbable as it was, the 1949 Airway had an equally unlikely origin: with the Convair 116/118 ConvAirCar. Several examples of this experimental car-aircraft hybrid were built and flown by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft in San Diego, California before the company (wisely, no doubt) decided not to enter production. At that point the project’s lead airframe engineer, Theodore P. Hall, and its automotive designer, W. Everett Miller, a veteran of the coachbuilt era, departed and formed their own company, Airway Motors. Their goal was not to produce a flying car, but a lightweight commuter automobile for the U.S. market.

For a microcar, the Airway had a generous wheelbase of 100 inches, with a narrow 50-inch track and a target weight of 650 lbs (later revised upward to 775/800 lbs). Two prototype vehicles were constructed: a tidy coupe called the Vicinity Car (above) and a slopeback sedan, the Traveller (below). Both had a single seat with room for three, but the Traveller could be equipped with a jump seat on the parcel deck behind the front seat.

According to press reports, production was to take place in a leased portion of Consolidated Vultee’s enormous San Diego aircraft plant. While the prototypes’ bodies were fabricated from aluminum, Airway planned to use molded fiber-reinforced plastic on the production models to control costs. The projected price was $650, roughly half the cost of a new ’49 Chevy or Ford. It was a noble plan, not a successful one, Airway would discover. Flush with newfound prosperity, postwar American car buyers were snapping up all the full-sized cars the Motor City could produce.

The Airway powerlant was an Onan air-cooled opposed twin, an engine more commonly found running pumps and generators, mounted ahead of the rear axle. With a displacement of just 38.8 cubic inches, its rated output was 10.6 hp. A fluid coupling (above) eliminated the need for a friction clutch, or a clutch pedal for that matter, and while the Airway was intended to be operated in high gear only, a low gear was included for hill climbing. Performance claims included a top speed of 50 mph and 50 mpg fuel economy.

The Airway received positive writeups in the prominent work bench magazines of the day (Popular Mechanics November 1948; Popular Science, January 1949) but beyond the two prototypes, it seems the fledgling company never got off the ground. In the late ’40s, numerous would-be automakers—Keller, Towne Shopper, and Playboy, to name a few—attempted to crack the market for small commuter vehicles in the USA, only to discover that it didn’t exist. None of them survived.