Monday, January 20, 2014

it seems like Curtiss Wright sold the monstrosity of a hovercraft waste of R&D to Ford, maybe


found on http://bangshift.com/blog/historic-video-1960s-army-testing-of-curtiss-wright-air-car-is-a-glimpse-of-a-future-that-never-was.html

Filmed in 1960, the brief clip shows military testing of a 1959 Curtiss-Wright Model 2500 Air Car. Powered by two 180 horsepower Lycoming engines that each provided lift via a four-blade fan, the Air Car was able to steer by redirecting this air through louvers set into either side of the body.

This weighed in at around 2500 pounds, was twenty-one feet long, eight feet wide, and claimed to reach speeds of “over fifty miles-per-hour”, all while carrying up to four passengers. It also drank aviation gas from two twenty-gallon tanks to give it a range of about two hours of run-time.



March 20th update, Road and Track did a feature on this as well, never mentioned the Ford vehicle http://www.roadandtrack.com/features/web-originals/curtiss-wright-air-cars

Jan 2018 update, maybe it was all development in hopes that they could make personal hovercraft


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/7507224-post21351.html

2 comments:

  1. This is so cool. I've never heard of it.

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    Replies
    1. then my job here is done! Another reader pleased to come across something cool, that they had not ever heard of before!

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