Antique & Classic Cars Blog

An article on zeppelins in the New York Times (remember zeppelins? Neither do I, but I’ve heard of them) spoke of a new look at aviation caused by high fuel prices. If it floats on its own, it uses less gas, so zeppelins are back–on sketch pads mostly. Not very practical for high-volume passenger service because they’re slow (like 100 miles per hour) but they’re cool!

With all the things presaged that we now have–space ships and televideo communications and bluetooth headsets like Lieutenant Uhura wore on the Enterprise–it’s interesting we haven’t done more with flying cars. Was the Jetsons bogus, or just too far ahead of its time?

Seriously (sort of). Think of how superior to the Amphicar (the road/lake German drop top) the Gibbs Aquada is. You’d think somebody would have built a flying car of roughly the same competence. Maybe the response to that is that Moller has but his designs seem more like small Harriers or spaceship replicas than flying cars.  Why can’t someone develop something that drives and flies as well as the Gibbs Aquada drivers and boats?

Stumbled across this writeup of the Waterman Aerobile, which Wikipedia credits with 56 mph road and 112 air. Not too bad. Another article called the craft a deathwish, not so inaccurate a description, perhaps, if Waterman found no buyers. The one he built is in the Smithsonian.

There have been other efforts–I had a book with a car that towed its own wings and turned into a sort of inconvenient car-plane thing. Anybody know another development in this area with serious potential. Apparently some people use the Gibbs Aquada in England to go down the Thames instead of sitting in street traffic.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.