The Evolution of the American Automobile Industry in the Early 1900s
From the very first days of the automobile, men began to wonder about merging the technologies of the auto with the capabilities of the aircraft. Here's a look back at the evolution of thought in that arena.As a starting point, the definitive work on flying cars and roadable aircraft seemed to be a self-published 250-page book by Palmer C. Stiles, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana. With the title, From Wheels to Wings, the work followed a detailed history of the flying automobile revealed through a patent-by-patent search of the 76 patents registered between 1918 and 1993. To my amazement, I immediately discovered that the first attempts to merge the worlds of the automobile and the aircraft had come, not in the 1930s, but a mere 14 years after the pioneering milestones set by the Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk and by Henry Ford in Detroit. The race had started early, and was certainly far from being over, for it was obvious on even a superficial reading that 10 of the 76 patents in Stiles book were filed after 1989.
1917The Glenn Curtiss Autoplane had its formal unveiling at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition held in New York City's Grand Central Palace in February of 1917. Billed at the time as an "aerial limousine," the strange little vehicle looked like the front half of a Model T Ford outfitted with Red Baron wings and pushed by a huge 9-foot four-blade pusher propeller mounted where the back seat should have been. The gigantic and clumsy triplane wings were fashioned into a single unit coupled with the empennage, and were meant to be removed as a single unit for road travel. This lone Autoplane, the one and only version ever made by Glenn Curtiss, was rushed to completion specifically for the New York exposition by using tri-wings identical to those on the Curtiss Model L triplane, as well as a standard Curtiss OXX 100 hp engine. The Autoplane skipped and jumped and hopped low off the ground a few times in 1917, but never actually took to the air. Still, the invention was sufficient to earn for Glenn Curtiss the unofficial title of the "Father of the Flying Car."
1934Eugene Vidal (father of author Gore Vidal) was serving as chief of the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce, and he had the idea to sponsor a competition for aircraft designs to fill the need for a safe, low-cost means of air travel for everyman. Carrying the government designation, AB-205, the competition was quickly dubbed, the "flivver contest." Design criteria for the "flivver" aircraft consisted of light weight, easy-to-fly handling capability, and affordability, with a target price of $700. Waldo Waterman became one of two men who would step up to claim the prize. Waterman had been first inspired with the idea of a tailless roadable airplane when he heard Glenn Curtiss once remark about how nice it would be to drive his aircraft away from the landing field.
1936Waldo Waterman began his long quest to marry the airplane with the car by building the Arrowplane in 1936. The all-aluminum body of the vehicle with its wide expanse of panoramic windows closely resembled the small cocoon that served as the flight-control pod on the belly of the giant 1930s German dirigible, Hindenburg. Attached to this passenger compartment was a three-wheel tricycle landing gear, two-blade pusher propeller, and great swept-back wings with oversize vertical winglets attached to the wingtips to handle the steering and stability functions normally served by a tail empennage which was lacking on the vehicle. Engine power came froma four-cylinder, air-cooled, inline Menasco B-4 delivering 95 horsepower.1937Quickly evolving from the Arrowplane, the Arrowbile, first introduced in 1937, was also all-metal and tailless with a pusher propeller and tricycle wheels. Powered by a 100 hp engine from Studebaker, the vehicle could make 70 mph on the road. Like the Arrowplane, Waterman's Arrowbile was also a two-place, high-wing monoplane with automobile style doors allowing entry into the wide side-by-side passenger cabin.By 1937, Waterman had formed his own Waterman Arrowplane Corporation in Santa Monica, California following the recognition of the Arrowplane by the Bureau of Air Commerce. He now shifted the primary focus of the company to the development of a roadable version of the aircraft from which the corporation took its name. This new vehicle would be required to meet the certification criteria imposed by both the Bureau of Air Commerce as well as the state motor vehicle department, and it signaled the beginning of a time when all future market entries would be subject to this same dual certification requirement.Work on the Arrowbile began with the development of a dual-use transmission system to drive both the propeller for flight and the rear wheels on the ground. It was anticipated that this arrangement would dramatically reduce the runway distance needed for takeoff since the road drive would work along with the propeller to build the necessary speed for lift. Realizing that not all components could be custom designed in this way without making the vehicle cost prohibitive, Waterman diligently sought to keep costs down by using off-the-shelf auto components wherever possible. From Ford he utilized the gear reduction assembly and the radiator grill. The steering wheel came from Austin. Willys supplied the wheel brakes, the internal differential gears, and the headlights. And from Studebaker, Waterman borrowed the engine, battery, starter, generator, radiator, hood grill, and most of the small interior parts such as knobs and handles. From aircraft industry suppliers Waterman outfitted the dashboard with a magnetic compass, altimeter, and air speed indicator to go along with the conventional automobile instruments. In spite of all attempts to cut costs by using standard parts, however, the price of the Arrowbile came in at $3,000 and greatly exceeded the target cost of $700 envisioned by Eugene Vidal for the "flivver contest."The first test flight of the Arrowbile took place on February 21, 1937, and the craft was happily found to be virtually impossible to stall and spin. The Studebaker Company, encouraged by the results and seeking to promote the fact that it supplied the engines and most of the parts, bought the company from Waterman and began production of the first five vehicles. The craft was now touted as a hybrid Studebaker-airplane, and since it had only three wheels, it was certified in California as a motorcycle. With motorcycle registrations, Arrowbiles numbers 1, 2, and 3 took off from Santa Monica bound for Cleveland, Ohio to attend the National Air Races in September 1937. Number 1 was forced to land in Arizona and suffered damage, but 2 and 3 performed some very impressive demonstration flights in Ohio during the air races. Ohio newspapers of the time reported that the Arrowbile could fly at speeds over 120 mph, and drive at 65 mph, and one ofthe men piloting the Arrowbile from Santa Monica to Ohio was quoted as saying, "If traffic got heavy, I flew. If the weather got bad, I cruised along the highways." Without knowing it, he was giving us a glimpse of the future.
1942Antonov KT (Kr'lya Tanka), also designated the A-40 or A-T, was developed in Russia in 1940 as an air-towed light tank fitted with biplane glider wings and a pair of tail booms with twin vertical surfaces and a high-mounted single horizontal surface. With a takeoff weight of over 18,000 lb and a wing span of 49 ft, the gigantic contraption was towed aloft (one time only) in a 1942 test by a Tupolev TB-3 heavy bomber.
Also in 1942, with the outbreak of World War II, plans were canceled for the production of a Ford flying automobile. Henry Ford had formally announced his firm commitment in 1940 to mass produce a flying car, and preliminary work had already begun. Ford insiders whispered that the old man had been "mesmerized" by the appearance of the Ford grill assembly in a photograph of the nose of the first 1937 Waterman Arrowbile.
1943Englishman, Raoul Hafner, introduced something known as the Rotabuggy, an air-towed flying Jeep (called a "Blitz Buggy") kept aloft by an autogyro rotor. Developed at the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment in Manchester, England, the vehicle featured, in addition to the large two-blade rotor, a streamlined tail fairing with twin rudderless fins, perspex door panels, and glider navigational instruments including a tachometer for the rotor. Towed behind a souped-up Bentley, it made its first flight on November 16, 1943. Later flights took place with a bomber doing the towing. Military brass reported the flying qualities of the Rotabuggy as "highly satisfactory," but pilots who had actually left the ground in the Jeep claimed it was a nightmare. After landing on one flight, the pilot had to be assisted in exiting the craft, and then he proceeded to lay down on the tarmac to recover from his fright.
1946Readers opening the pages of Life Magazine during the week of February 4, 1946 were treated to photographs of a flying car as pictured in various demonstrations of its functionality cruising high in the air, motoring down the road, parked on an airport runway, sitting in a home driveway as it was being loaded with luggage, and gassing up at Gulf service station pump. The roadable plane had been built by Willis Brown, owner of the Southern Aircraft plant in Garland, Texas. However, it was described in the Life article as having been invented by Ted Hall who worked at the time for Consolidated Vultee. The names of Ted Hall and the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Company were already becoming fixtures in the world of flying cars.Willis Brown's roadable plane, like the 1917 Curtiss Autoplane, had its wing constructed as part of a single unit blended with twin booms extending 15 feet back to an empennage with twin vertical tails and a single horizontal rear wing. And as with the Curtiss Autoplane, the entire assembly was meant to be detached and left at the airfield when the vehicle took to the road. The Life article showed in a photograph how four mechanics would easily prepare the three-wheel car for flight, attaching the one-piece flying surface assembly in only ten minutes by inserting four bolts and hooking up the control cables while at the same time attaching the removable propeller. Almost invisible in the photograph, however, was the fact that the four mechanics were being aided by a crane that supported the weight of the flight assembly, and they were positioning the two vehicle components with precision by following patterns on the floor laid out with tape.A single engine served as the powerplant for both road and air travel, the 130 hp Franklin air-cooled motor similar to the one favored by Waldo Waterman. Willis Brown was claiming in the Life article that his roadable plane was nearing the production stage, and as a selling point, a final photograph showed how easily the 938 pound car could be jacked up to change a flat tire. In February of 1946, it looked as though production and marketing of the flying car would begin any day. In addition to Willis Brown with his Southern Aircraft facility, Consolidated Vultee was also on the verge of introducing a product, thanks to the visionary effort of Ted Hall, the man credited in the Life Magazine article with inspiring Willis Brown's effort.Ted Hall was primarily involved with the Consolidated Vultee Model 111, an extremely stylish all-aluminum roadable monoplane with a cantileved wing mounted low on the fuselage. A horizontally-opposed piston, air-cooled engine drove a three-bladed prop mounted in the rear aft of a T tail. Testing of the craft had taken place in 1945. Under the direction of Ted Hall, a later version designated the Model 116 first flew in 1946 and went on to log 66 successful flights. This later Model 116, rather than being a roadable aircraft, was closer to being a true flying car with a one-piece wing and twin-boom tail section (identical to the Willis Brown craft) that could be detached for highway travel (presumably with four mechanics and a crane). The automobile component consisted of a modified 26 hp Crosley two-door coupe equipped with a full belly pan to reduce underside wind turbulence. Unlike Willis Brown's three-wheel automotive component with a propeller on the nose, the Ted Hall Consolidated Model 116 had four wheels, and had the propeller situated in a pod centered high on the wing so that it looked like a complete airplane mounted on top of a rather conventional-looking Crosley automobile.
In addition to Willis Brown and Ted Hall, another inventor by the name of Robert Fulton Jr. was in the early stages of development with a flying car by 1946. In the fall of that year he had a chance meeting with a fellow kindred spirit, Moulton "Molt" Taylor, when Taylor came to New Castle, Delaware looking for an aircraft plant to buy. Just as Waldo Waterman had been inspired to pursue the dream of the flying car by a remark he once heard from Glen Curtiss when they met face to face, now it was Molt Taylor whose life would be changed by the meeting with Robert E. Fulton Jr. Within ten years, Taylor would become the most successful of all the flying car builders up to that time.For anyone in 1946 who might have been unsatisfied with only four versions of a flying car poised to enter the market, there was an obscure fifth design that appeared later in the year. The cover of the magazine, Mechanix Illustrated, for the month of October, 1946, displayed a full-page color photograph of what looked like a traditional Piper Cub, sitting on a driveway in front of a home garage. In very small typeface appeared the words, "roadable plane," to signal that the craft was something far more than a Piper Cub. Inside the publication were four more B&W photographs. The first showed the roadable plane filling its gas tank at the pump a staged photograph almost identical to the "Fill er up" scene of the Willis Brown aircar in Life Magazine, and causing any flight-knowledgeable observer to wonder just how easy it might have been in 1946 to locate a neighborhood filling station that pumped 100 octane, high-test aviation gasoline.It wasn't that gas pump photograph that was shocking, however. The other pictures in the 1946 Mechanix Illustrated showed the wings of the "Plane-mobile" being FOLDED ON TOP. And just as amazing as the folding wings stowed atop the vehicle was the fact that the magazine article failed to mention the name of the aircraft's builder, the implication being that construction of various flying cars at that particular time had become so common as to be unworthy of specific notoriety.Quoting from that 1946 article, "The wing folding can be accomplished by two men in about ten minutes, the only tools a wrench, hammer, and drift punch. While one man supports and folds the wings, the second disengages the wing fitting pins. Disconnection of the flight controls takes place automatically when the wings are folded. An improved version employs a simplified manual folding arrangement which requires only three minutes and one man."
Looking back at that time, it was now interesting to wonder what might have happened if the folding wing design had been adopted by Ted Hall and been subjected to all the development that was possible back then with the almost unlimited resources of a giant aeronautical company like Consolidated Vultee. The highway component of that mysterious Mechanix Illustrated invention, dubbed the "Plane-mobile," looked exactly like what it was the fuselage of a small airplane. It had no automotive styling whatsoever, and it sat high above the ground on three wheels attached to conventional aircraft landing struts. But what if its folding wing design had been combined with a real automobile like the streamlined swooped-back Crosley used on the Consolidated Vultee Model 116? The speculation about such a possibility was irresistible, and it was made even more irresistible by what happened the following year.
1947That other major player in the cast of characters associated with the flying car was Robert Fulton Jr., a distant relative of the inventor of the steam engine. His solution to the hybrid puzzle, which he named the Airphibian, took a different approach. Instead of modifying a car for flying, he chose to adapt a plane for the road. The predictable result was that the highway version of his craft looked like a truncated airplane fuselage, with the sole concession to automotive convention being that it rested on four wheels instead of three. And it was, perhaps, because the Airphibian was mostly an airplane that it became the first aircar hybrid to be certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (the predecessor of the FAA).Similar in appearance to a Stinson Voyager when in flight, Fulton's high-wing, Airphibian four-wheeled monoplane hybrid was first tested as a concept prototype in 1945. It had been continually refined throughout 1946, and was now ready as a production prototype in 1947. The first prototype test flight of the production model successfully took place on May 21, 1947. Being a true airplane, it flew well, as expected, although the weight penalty imposed by the automotive parts made it a bit sluggish. In addition, its ground handling was also considered excellent in both the airplane and roadable configurations. In flight, the brake pedal controlled the right rudder and the clutch pedal controlled the left rudder. Only the two rear wheels could be braked for runway taxiing, although all four wheels braked when the semi-monocoque forward fuselage was rolling down the highway, powered by a 150 hp, six-cylinder engine, and looking like a sad little airplane with an amputated tail.Fulton did nothing to break with what was becoming the dominant paradigm of flying car conversion between air and highway modes. He used removable flight components, although he added his own twist. The wings, when separated from the plane, were supported by small wheels serving as outriggers, thus eliminating the need for a crane. To attach the wings to the highway component (because of its stubby aeronautical look it was hard to call it a car) this roadable part of the vehicle was backed into a kind of cocoon arrangement that served as a rear fuselage to hold the wings and empennage. A system of locking levers and locking pins held everything together, and the wingtip outrigger wheels as well as a retractable tail wheel were all cranked up into storage positions. After removing the prop spinner from the front of the craft, the propeller was screwed on with a built-in wrench and the spinner was replaced again. Limit switches prevented the engine from starting if anything was improperly connected. It was claimed at the time that one man could make the conversion in five minutes, although when Fulton's creation failed to capture a market, the blame was put on the conversion process which was judged to be too lengthy and complicated.Waldo Waterman was also back in the race by 1947, having rounded up as many of the remaining parts of the incomplete Arrowbile #6 as he could find. He now called his creation the Aerobile, and it had a larger fuselage that could accommodate a pilot in the forward seat and two passengers in the rear. This fuselage was made of welded steel tube covered with sheet aluminum panels. The wingtip-mounted fins and rudders also featured welded steel tubing although covered in this instance with fabric. A postwar Franklin-built Tucker engine provided the power, but by now the Franklin engine had been converted to liquid cooling which, along with all the welded steel tubing in the fuselage and wings, made the craft unnecessarily heavy. To compensate for this, the wing was greatly enlarged, and as was the case with the other flying cars, the redesigned wing was removed for highway use.
Meanwhile, out at the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Company of San Diego, California, the year 1947 saw Ted Hall and the company that employed him on the verge of actually entering the market with a new flying car that promised, "all the advantages of a Cadillac." The building and testing of the prototype had already consumed several hundred thousand dollars, and the projected cost for the hybrid air/car vehicle was said to be in the neighborhood of $1,500 and this didn't include the flight attachments which carried an additional unspecified price tag, and without which the new vehicle couldn't fly. Hoping to offset some of this "sticker shock," the advance advertising touted the fact that the automobile component would get 45 miles per gallon.The ConvAIRCAR, also known by the designation Convair 118, was primarily funded by Consolidated Vultee, looking for new markets as their operation began shifting from World War II government contract work on military aircraft to new consumer air travel applications. A hybrid flying car initial production run of approximately 160,000 units was what they had in mind. They brought on board the noted industrial designer, Henry Dreyfuss, to help with the styling. Dreyfuss had gained a vast reputation in the 1930s styling everything from a new telephone for Bell to the rounded-nose aerodynamic shape of the steam trains that pulled the Twentieth Century Limited for the New York Central Railroad. Dreyfuss was a proponent of the styling dictum that, "form follows function," and this seemed the perfect mantra for an aircar design where every pound of material presented a tradeoff in use capability. The rounded body of the automobile component was made of plastic-impregnated fiberglass (seven years before the Corvette) and weighed only 725 pounds. A highly successful one-hour test flight over San Diego was reported the New York Times on November 17, 1947, but only three weeks later the craft crash-landed in the desert when the gas gauge malfunctioned. The wing and tail section was salvaged from the crash and used on the second prototype which flew on January 29, 1948. Curiously, since it was only the automotive component that differed in two prototypes, the two experimental machines both used the same aircraft registration number (NX90850). Dual power came from a 25 hp Crosley engine in the rear of the car and a 190hp Lycoming O-435C built into a central pod on the 34.5 ft detachable wing for the aeronautical function.
In trying to analyze the frenzy of interest surrounding flying cars in the years 1945- 1947, and in trying to speculate about why nothing came of it, the following scenario seemed likely. One key to success the folding wing idea probably remained hidden in the obscurity of inventor anonymity within the pages of Mechanix Illustrated, which enjoyed far less readership than Life Magazine. And if Robert Fulton or Willis Brown or Ted Hall and the folks at Consolidated Vultee were even aware of the folding wing configuration, they were all too far along with their own designs to seriously consider a change. Moreover, there was undoubtedly a groupthink mindset at work. Ted Hall and Fulton and Brown all had detachable flight components as the cornerstone of their designs. All three were anticipating a time when small airports would handle the chores of detaching and attaching wing assemblies, and possibly would even be renting them for temporary use on the various automotive vehicles. With this shared vision, it must have seemed unlikely to any of them at the time that they could all three be using the wrong approach. Waldo Waterman's Aerobile even had a redesigned one-piece detachable wing by this time.The reappearance of Waldo Waterman and his Aerobile at this particular time introduced yet another fascinating element into the "what if" equation. By 1947, Studebaker had severed its short-lived relationship with flying cars and had pulled out of the Waterman operation. In the improved postwar version of the Arrowbile, now renamed the Aerobile, the earlier powerplant, that had been supplied, with great pride, by Studebaker, was now replaced with a Tucker engine. Meanwhile, Studebaker had moved on to another project of its own. In 1946, the company had hired Raymond Loewy to style its newest production model, and Loewy gave Studebaker the bullet-nose Starlight Coupe, considered by many at the time to be the most futuristic and beautiful of all the 1947 car models. Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss had been competing with each other since the late 1930s when The Pennsylvania Railroad had hired Loewy and The New York Central Railroad had hired Dreyfuss, and the two brilliant industrial designers had been tasked by the competing rail giants to restyle their flagship steam locomotives. And now, barely a decade later, Dreyfuss was working on flying cars for Consolidated Vultee where his guiding principle of, "form follows function," was yielding some body styles that were functional but downright ugly. In contrast to Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy was always primarily concerned with the beauty of most of his designs. Image and style drove his work. Only a misalignment of the timing in Studebaker's brief association with the flying car had kept the talents of Raymond Loewy from being put to work on a flightworthy automobile instead of the 1947 Starlight Coupe, and in turn, Loewy would almost certainly have brought beauty to the flying car. Beauty was the predominant product feature that had eluded all the players in the flying car race, and Studebaker had dropped out before it might have filled in that gap. Most of the elements for a successful product design were already recognized and even applied in 1947, but not in one place at one time, and it would take more than another half-century for the right combination to fall into place. And without the right product, with that right alignment of product features, the most essential of all elements the customers would never materialize. The fact was that in 1947, there were more people who were running companies to build flying cars than there were people who actually bought one.
On the time line of history, some points are more fortuitous than others for the occurrence of certain events. 1947 would have been an optimum year in which to introduce mass production of a flying car, not just because of a great national faith and optimism in the exuberant possibilities of technology, but also because it was a time of product convergence. Combination products with multi-use capability were all the rage in that post war time. Every new kitchen stove had a built-in oven. Washer-dryer combination appliances were popular with the people who could afford them. And as television entered the households of America in increasing numbers, the mark of ultimate prestige and opulence in living rooms was the TV console, a low-slung piece of cabinet furniture styled to fit with the decor of the owner's particular taste, and including in one single convergent unit a television screen, a superheterodyne radio receiver, a record player, and in many cases, even a small hidden liquor compartment in which to store the bottles and glasses for an evening cocktail. The console TV was the late 1940s equivalent of today's entertainment room with the giant projection screen.As a convergent product, the flying car would have fit right in with the expectations and tastes of Americans in 1946. And although that popularity of convergence-based products would last another twenty years, individualized divergent products gradually began to come into greater favor. The trendiness of increasingly sophisticated and specialized precision-turntable Hi-Fi setups for playing records had the immediate effect of removing that function from the console unit, and with it went the liquor cabinet. Television, after diverging from the record player and the cocktail compartment and the radio receiver, finally diverged even from living room furniture in the form of tasteful wooden cabinetry, and then went on to abandon all attempts to look like anything but an intrusive single-function black box. And over the next four decades, consumer products in all categories became almost exclusively confined to single use functions.By the early 1990s, most product marketing gurus and consultants had come to an almost unanimous opinion that the normal evolution of products favored divergence over convergence. The examples were many. Fewer stoves were sold with ovens. Washer-dryer combinations nearly disappeared. And the combination of television with a VCR player (seemingly a perfect pairing) had captured only the smallest possible segment of the overall television market. These, however, were not the favorite examples to be cited by the marketing shamans and consultants to prove that divergence usually triumphs over convergence in the marketplace. Their favorite example was the flying car and its aquatic analog, the Amphicar.
When a German company introduced an ungainly little automobile/boat hybrid vehicle dubbed the Amphicar in the mid 1960s, the immediate assessment from consumers was that it, "maneuvered on water like a car and handled on the highway like a boat." Disillusioned owners of the Amphicar observed in wry tones that their two best experiences were on the day they bought it and the day they sold it. The vehicle was short-lived. A flying car, if one had been introduced in that same time period, would undoubtedly have met a similar fate due to the many compromises imposed by the dual air/road function, and the Amphicar example was certainly on the minds of the decision makers at Ford Motor Company when they declined to mass produce Molt Taylor's Aerocar in the early 1970s. Ford was not anxious to repeat the Edsel experience. On the time line of history, some points are more fortuitous than others for the occurrence of certain events, and especially when the event is the marketing of a breakthrough product.
