Aerocar flying automobile in flight over hills

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Few automobiles of the postwar years tried anything like what this machine attempts: lifting off a runway and climbing over open country. The Aerocar was the work of aircraft designer Molt Taylor, who built a car-sized body with wings and a tail that folded back so it could be driven on public roads and then flown. Taylor's first flying prototype appeared in 1949, and a later model received certification as a roadable aircraft in 1956, though only a handful were ever built. The flight shown here captures how persistently designers tried to combine the car and the airplane in the years after the war.

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