Aeronautical Motorcars

[Deleted]

blame Dieselweasel for this, he got me looking for more craziness after he posted this over in the Picture Game thread: retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=65999&page=39

Goggomobil with a 10.2l 9 cyl. radial engine


I answered with a Tucker which used a modified helicopter engine, but then I found what should have been my answer instead: the Swandean Spitfire Special from 1953





Which reminded me of The Beast, built by John Dodd around a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. The car was up until recently in Spain, but I'm led to believe (by the internets) that it's restored and back in the UK again. He had a bit of a legal to-do with Rolls Royce over the use of their grille on his car which sadly lead to the removal of the shiny slab of metal.

This is apparently the first conception of the car, and it looks much better overall, I think.




Mr Dodd must have gone on to redesign the car and turn it into a shooting brake/estate because looking at the original picture it appears to be a coupé, allbeit a massive one.




But wait, there's more! Honestly, this is one of those things where I thought I'd post one crazy plane-powered car, and I keep finding more of the things.



Apparently, it's not just the big engines either, little ones happen too like the infamous Aerocar.



There you go, some fantastical engineering. Apologies for any pea roasts.

[waveman1500]

I'll chip in with a more recent offering from Australia. Rod Hadfield's Rolls-Royce powered 1955 Chevy, 'Final Objective'. I've seen it up close in the metal and it's absolutely astonishing.







www.bikerlifestyle.co.uk/features/other/final/objective.html

[Deleted]

waveman1500: I'd noticed Final Objective (Chevrolls Royce?) when I was looking around, but none of the photographs I found were a patch on those you've shown, good to see some detail shots of it and a link to more info.

[autohausdolby]

Talking of Aeronautical cars, I was hoping for some of the Fritz Lang style futuristic cars from before the war. I still want to live in a modernist house, own a streamlined car, wear a felt hat and fly my autogyro to the dirigible field to go to New York for a business meeting. We were cheated out of our rightfull vision of the future ;D

[autohausdolby]

[autohausdolby]

[autohausdolby]

[TurboDieselWeasel]

"The Beast" in action then:



And now... (can find german only, sorry... ):



And the Chevy:



And whilst on the topic of Merlin power; does anyone know what happened to the Merlin powered Rover SD1 'Practical Performance car' Mag build...? I have a feeling it was never finished...?

Cheers,
Jan

PS: Great topic! ;D

[autohausdolby]

I've managed to find a small version of one of the Bruce McCall pictures that I loved as a child:

[TurboDieselWeasel]

Here's more of "the beast" filmed by John Dodds doughter:
www.youtube.com/user/soosiedodd#p/u

[Siert]

A guy in Finland build himself this using a Rolls-Royce Meteor engine:





I overtook it once while it was being trailered behind a huge American pick-up truck, it's VERY big and impressive.
www.rrec.fi/ajankohtaista/meteor/index.html

[stealthstylz]

IIRC (and I could be completely wrong) Paul Jameson started building the Beast but sold it to Dodds without the body or something similar.

The chassis that Jameson is sat in ended up with a body on, but nothing as futuristic as in that article.



The reason Dodds swapped to the touring body is because the old coupe body was totalled in a fire. I can't remember the exact reason, think it was an exploding tyre puncturing the petrol tank or something.

Matt

[ruffgeezer]

Well since most of the others I knew of are up already, I'll just drop this here:

Charlie Broomfield's Meteor SD1 (I know not strictly aero as it's a tank engine, but it was aero derived)

[PhilA]

Dec 29, 2010 10:37:26 GMT stealthstylz said:

The reason Dodds swapped to the touring body is because the old coupe body was totalled in a fire. I can't remember the exact reason, think it was an exploding tyre puncturing the petrol tank or something.

Matt

I think he took it over a humpback bridge a bit fast somewhere in Europe, tore the sump open and the resulting slick caught on the the exhaust, sending it up in smoke.

[v8ian]

Deffo the car was burnt by an engine fire, I'm 99% certain the engine is a tank engine, last time I saw the car, [NSRA hotrod nationals knebworth] there was no engine casting apparent to take the centrifugal charger, I remember the feature in Hot Car and Dodds claimed it was a tank engine, Rover built, but with RR cam covers,, there was also a fair bit of litigation flying about over the use of a RR grill on the first version, I often wondered why the body caught fire,

[Team Blitz]

Team Blitz project underway, the SR-76:




Why, yes, those ARE F-104 Starfighter drop tank fins!

[Seth]

[popuptoaster]

There was a hotrod pickup truck with a helicopter glass bubble on the front and a white jag based fighter plane look alike both featured in SM years back, cant find a pick of either of them though.

[Deleted]

Some pretty neat stuff being posted up so far.

@team Blitz: Is that a narrowed Ford Capri? I'm having trouble working out what on earth is going on with it and would like to know more, if only for the sake of curiosity.

[Team Blitz]

The goal is to build the world's wildest "theme" Capri. It has the center 23-inches removed. We're now channeling the bottom. Then it gets installed on a wide sprint car racing chassis. Ours has a Winters Quickchange rear end and Wide-5 spindles! When done, we'll have a 2-passenger vehicle with driver in front, co-pilot behind. Exhaust external, of course. Engine, at this moment is to be a Ford 347cid V8 stroker, shifted by a T5 Tremec.

I started a thread about the build, but somebody locked it. Oh well, radical hotrod engineering has always been threatening to conventional thinking.