It is probably fair to say that the Taylor Aerocar was not a particularly good car, nor was it a particularly good plane. Only five were ever made, one of which being a prototype. But that’s still more than Larry Page’s now-delayed Kitty Hawk project, and you can even buy an Aerocar.
That is, you can buy one of the Aerocars. This one is going up for sale at Barrett-Jackson at Scottsdale 2020, held in early January.
Price is just “no reserve” but someone appears to have listed a Taylor Aerocar for about $1 million (600,000 pounds) a few years back, as the New York Daily News reported at the time.
How it drove was a bit funky, as the Hemmings noted in a 2013 profile:
Still primitive by automobile standards of the day, the Aerocar featured an air-cooled Lycoming flat-four engine, positioned over the rear wheels. A three-speed manual transmission provided drive to the front wheels, and this road transmission was simply placed into neutral when the Aerocar was in flight mode. Part of the conversion process from automobile to airplane involved the fitting of a tail cone and propeller assembly, which was driven by a power take-off located behind the rear license plate.
And while the market for the car never took off, with its limited top speed on the road (60 miles per hour) and complications being a plane (everything folded away, which was not exactly a one-person job of re-installation) the Taylor Aerocar remains the only thing that approaches being an actual flying car. I mean, it’s more of a road-legal plane, but how can you be mad at it? Look at this little thing! It’s adorable.
