Coming to you straight from the future! Okay, more like 1949. Here’s an idea whose time would never come: the flying car.
The flying car is an old and enduring dream, if not a terribly practical one. (Imagine the traffic jams.) Familiar experiments with car/plane mashups in the United States include the 1937 Waterman Arrowbile, Molt Taylor’s Aerocars (1949 through 1966, roughly) and more recently, the Moller Skycar. Countless more examples, or their color renderings at least, have graced the covers of the popular workbench magazines. Each one promised that we’d all be driving flying cars tomorrow but somehow, tomorrow never came.
We don’t know much about the auto/plane hybrid in this 1949 British Pathe newsreel piece, except that it came from Italy. Top speed on the highway is a claimed 150 (kph we assume, but either kph or mph is dubious) while the wings fold out from their stowed position to a span of 36 feet. If you can supply more info about this craft and its builder, feel free to school us. We’d love to know more. Now watch this.
The dream lives on! My website shows a picture of one road-going prototype appraised some years ago.
I wanna see the submarine that climbs trees!
Me too!
Pretty sure that is one of Luigi Pellarini’s Aerauto. There were 5 Colli-bodied vehicles, named PL1, PL2C, PL3C, PL4 (Aeronova AER-1) and PL5C, built between1945 and 1949 and powered by different engines (Gilera, Walter Mikron, Lycoming and Continental).
Thank you! That’s a lot of great info to work with! Much appreciated!
Remember the flying Pinto from the 70’s?
Flying and cars mixes about as good as oil and water……..:]
“Imagine the traffic jams.” Yes indeed. Look art the drivers who have trouble coping in two dimensions, then imagine the chaos (and smoking craters) if they had to deal with three.