the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

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heady days after World War II, during a boom in private aviation that
writer Bill Yenne dubbed “the golden age of the flying automobile.” During
those years, according to Palmer Stiles, author of the 1994 book Roadable
Aircraft: From Wheels to Wings, most of the seventy-plus U.S. patents
for flying cars were filed. That was also when “suddenly the vista was
endless, promising limitless possibilities,” according to Timothy Jacobs,
author of The World’s Worst Cars. “The world was abuzz with new solutions
to old problems, and among the many wonders held up was the
bright prospect of ‘an aircraft in every garage.’ ”
One of the men who embodied that age was Moulton B. Taylor,
who invented the Aerocar in 1949. He recalled for the Seattle Times in
1990 that he rounded up fifty investors willing to put up $1,000 each to
support his sketch fantasies about a vehicle that would enable them to “fl y
to the airport, fold up the wings and remove the tail, then leave them at
the airport while you drive to wherever you have your business.” He built
the prototype Aerocar with that money in less than a year at his workshop
in Longview, Washington, and it was both an engineering marvel and
profoundly unattractive—“a real head-turner, for all the wrong reasons,”
wrote the Seattle paper. Taylor, a savvy promoter, rolled it out for investors
following nine months of development and, to demonstrate its abilities,
drove it to a local airport, attached the wings and tail, and fl ew it
back. His success led to an oil company–sponsored promotional tour and
an appearance on televi sion’s I’ve Got a Secret, during which Taylor and
an assistant answered questions from the blindfolded panel for three minutes
while they converted the Aerocar from a road vehicle into an airplane.
Taylor also raised $750,000 by selling stock in Aerocar Inc. and
began the expensive pro cess of government certification, which fi nally
was approved by federal aviation officials on December 13, 1956.
To goose public interest in his odd vehicle, Taylor sold one of the
six Aerocars his company produced to actor Robert Cummings, who, according
to the Seattle Times, “used the Aerocar almost as his co-star in the