Aerocar

This cute car could fly above traffic

The late Moulton (Molt) Taylor, of Longview, Washington was an inventor, tinkerer, engineer, former navy pilot, and world-class dreamer. He had designed some innovative small airplanes, but in the late 1940s he became obsessed with building a car that could fly. Others had tried and failed or written off the idea as science fiction. But Taylor was one who succeeded.

His invention, which he dubbed the Aerocar, was a tiny, two-passenger vehicle that had a small engine, rear propellers, and a set of wings that could be towed behind the car and easily attached to transform the car into a small airplane. The Civil Aeronautics Administration (now the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA) certified the Aerocar as airworthy. But despite interest from the Ford Motor Company, the Aerocar never went into full production. Still, people did get to see it fly. Taylor made seven prototypes and production models of the Aerocar. In an early newsreel report about the invention, the announcer exclaimed that with the Aerocar drivers would be able to “change a 60-mile-per-hour, traffic-hampered buggy into a high-flyer in the unlimited highways of the sky.”

Around 1960, a Portland, Oregon radio station used an Aerocar for eye-catching traffic reporting. And in 1962 actor Bob Cummings flew his own Aerocar in his TV sitcom, The Bob Cummings Show, in which he played a photographer and amateur detective with romantic misadventures. In real life, Cummings gave Aerocar rides to his Hollywood dates, among them, it is said, Marilyn Monroe.

Today, the red Aerocar III can be spotted in the Great Gallery at Seattle’s Museum of Flight. But you’ll have to search for it. The museum’s 3-million-cubic-foot, six-story glass and steel main exhibit hall is home to almost 40 full-size historic aircraft. The tiny Aerocar designed for quick getaways is tucked under the wing of one of the larger planes.