Comments on: The flying Ford Pinto

The flying Ford Pinto

Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:27:39 -0800

Henry Smolinski and Hal Blake had a great idea: bolt the wings and engine of a Cessna to the body of 1971 Ford Pinto. Fly the Pinto to an airport near your destination, unlatch it from the wings, and drive it where you want to go. No need for rental cars...

It worked. Until the day it failed. Sometime late in 1973, Smolinski and Blake climbed aboard the "Mitzar" and rolled down the runway. During takeoff, the peculiar marriage of wheels and wings divorced, and the Advanced Vehicle Engineers found themselves sailing through the California sky in a very un-advanced vehicle, a wingless Pinto.

Pics here: 1, 2, 3

By: wobh

wobh — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:41:05 -0800

Awe. Some.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:43:26 -0800

Great ideas and poor (or maybe I should say, thrifty?) execution are generally a bad combination. Sheet metal screws to hold the wings on? Sorry but that's just stupid.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:43:55 -0800

Fucking awesome.

By: Tube

Tube — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:51:30 -0800

When I was in college, a fellow student told me the Pinto was a "rolling hibachi".

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:53:17 -0800

After The Son Set "Yeah, but it's a dry heat," Icarus quipped, even as the wings ripped from his sleek, young back, plunging him headfirst into the sea about a mile outside of Crete. We dutifully collected and catalogued the debris. Listed whiteboard bullet points at the Post Mortem Debrief: Lessons Learned • All test pilots get parachutes • You can't tell kids anything • Paraffin makes a piss-poor weld at 30,000 feet

By: lee

lee — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:54:00 -0800

"A suddenly wingless automobile" I saw that too, but didn't click. Thanks for posting it.

By: greycap

greycap — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 21:59:11 -0800

Great post. As ways to shuffle off this mortal coil go, it's a pretty awesome (if stupid) one. I also love the use of the phrase "sailing through the air". "Plummeting like a brick" - or indeed a Ford Pinto - is what I would have picked, but still...

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 22:52:09 -0800

Wow. Just wow.

By: _sirmissalot_

_sirmissalot_ — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:07:55 -0800

"The world is still waiting for production of a commercial roadable aircraft." What is it, 2000 and effing SIX and we STILL do not have a commercially available roadable aircraft?

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:16:08 -0800

When I was a kid, about this time, I had one of those SSP cars (YouTube link to commercial for the "Smash-Up Derby" version) with the massive wheel in the middle; you inserted a geartoothed strip and pulled it out hard, like a ripcord, and the wheel would spin hard. Put it on the ground and it would take off, fast. This one was in the form of a Pinto, and the packaging material included a flimsy plastic mount that unfolded like a pair of wings. This piece was meant to be discarded, but I remember playing with the things and imagining this car could be mounted to a pair of wings and flown, and dismounted and driven... It would have surprised me a lot to learn that someone was building precisely this at more or less the same time.

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:18:22 -0800

"The world is still waiting for production of a commercial roadable aircraft." "What is it, 2000 and effing SIX and we STILL do not have a commercially available roadable aircraft?" What about the skycar?

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:31:59 -0800

Didn't that thing show up in one of the James Bond films? ("The Man with the Golden Gun"?)

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:38:29 -0800

That was an AMC Matador. The flying one was a miniature. All the cars in that film were AMCs (formerly Rambler), which by that time was almost a joke brand that survived mostly through government fleet sales before briefly becoming Eagle and eventually being purchased by Chrysler who really only wanted their Jeep division.

By: YoBananaBoy

YoBananaBoy — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:40:44 -0800

I don't know about the James Bond thing. But other things from the same creators (Moller and Freedom Motors), have shown up on Hoth.

By: a_green_man

a_green_man — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:46:59 -0800

Didn't they know by 1973 that Pintos were lemons? My family certainly did by 1975, but then again, we were poor and didn't really want to fly the thing anyway so maybe we can be excused. Maybe they deserve a retroactive Darwin Award. Kinda cool though it may be.

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:58:58 -0800

I WANT MY FLYING CA-- Uh, actually, you can keep it.

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 23:59:44 -0800

k. my old man smoked alot of dope in the seventies and made art.... thanks for sharing what some others fathers were up to. ALOT OF DOPE.

By: bardic

bardic — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:12:31 -0800

Genius, stupidity, meet your friend here Mr. Thin Line.

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:53:53 -0800

a wingless Pinto Well, now, that's gotta suck.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 01:27:11 -0800

The Mitzar, which takes its name from the next-to-the-last star in the Big Dipper and means, "horse," "Mitzar" is the name of the car, but the next-to-last star in the Big Dipper is "Mizar": the etymology is Arabic, meaning "girdle", not "horse". And why the "t" in there? /pedant

By: Mitrovarr

Mitrovarr — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:38:48 -0800

My guess is it was Mitzar instead of Mizar because it sounded nice and didn't sound so much like 'miser'. There are a lot better star names, though, so I dunno why they didn't pick one of them. Alnitak? Bellatrix? Albireo? Capella? Antares? Arcturus? Deneb? Mintaka? Meissa? I dunno. Hell, even Alcor is better.

By: rdone

rdone — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 02:41:22 -0800

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?" Andrea del Sarto Robert Browning

By: cropshy

cropshy — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 03:57:38 -0800

When I was in elementary school in the 70's I had a book on custom cars that had the flying Pinto in it. I always thought it was a cool idea, but little did I know that by the time I got the book that the thing had killed both of its inventors.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:40:36 -0800

> Sheet metal screws to hold the wings on? The FAA approved that thing? Even as a homebuilt/experimental?

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 05:24:31 -0800

Using inferior fasteners? Flying car doesn't.

By: deanc

deanc — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 05:31:16 -0800

"Mitzar" is the name of the car, but the next-to-last star in the Big Dipper is "Mizar": the etymology is Arabic, meaning "girdle", not "horse". And why the "t" in there? /pedant pendant on... The article in the FPP uses "Mizar." Many semitic words transliterate directly into the latin alphabet using a "z" but are pronounced with a "tz" sound. The city of "Hazor" from the Bible is pronounced "Hatz-or," and Israelis who come to the US with the surname "Schwarz" occasionally end up adding a "t" to their last name to make the canonical pronunciation clear. /pedant

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 06:01:26 -0800

Nerd fight! Wooooo!!!

By: jfuller

jfuller — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 06:47:08 -0800

> Many semitic words such as "pizza"

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:00:28 -0800

The Pinto was choosen probably because it was light, cheap and readily available in America. All thing important if your planning on distributing a flying kit car. Besides in 71 it hadn't yet got it's reputation.

By: beelzbubba

beelzbubba — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 08:23:53 -0800

> Many semitic words such as "pizza" posted by jfuller Pizza, you will notice, has a double-z in the middle. The words referred to upthread--Hazor, Schwarz, Mizar--all have a single z, thus making the writer's comment about the semitic origin still a valid point, and yours...not.

By: Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese

Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 08:42:49 -0800

"A suddenly wingless automobile" I saw that too, but didn't click. Thanks for posting it. posted by lee at 12:54 AM EST on October 28 Lee is referring to this very interesting page where I came across the first article. Lee, how could you not click that?!

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:15:04 -0800

Here's the Taylor Aerocar, another attempt at the car/plane hybrid. It's on display in Oshkosh, WI, and is excellent to see. The footage of it cruising around on streets with the wings folded behind is also great.

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:32:12 -0800

I'm going to hell for this but I can't be the only reader who pictured Henry Gibson's demise in The Blues Brothers. There are a lot better star names Ladies and gentlemen, we present the 1973 Zubenelgenubi! (Damn Cessna already registered Zubeneschamali.) Mizar is the "horse" in the "horse and rider" visual double; that's gotta be the source of the error. But of course "Mizar" doesn't mean horse any more than "Rudolph" means reindeer. It's the kind of mistake a dumb stoned hippie would make (which makes sense in this context.) "Ascella" (Zeta Sgr) means armpit. That's what I'm naming my plane.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:45:58 -0800

deanc: I appreciate the linguistic clarification of the spelling. I did see the "mizar" in the first link, but the other three use "mitzar", and I was trying to figure out what was going on. Alioth, Kitalpha, Kurhah, and Markab all have Arabic roots that relate to horses in some way... I guess they just don't have that je ne sais quois that "Mitzar" does.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:46:58 -0800

quoi. that damn "s" is sneaky.

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:34:52 -0800

I can't be the only reader who pictured Henry Gibson's demise in The Blues Brothers Indeed you are not. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great honour to present to you a wonderous dramatization of The Wingless Pinto. Youtube, at exactly 7:00 in, but the whole sequence is worth it. First time time I saw many years ago this I laughed so hard I ached.