Would you go flying in a Ford Pinto?
March 4th, 2008
The first in our series of the world’s worst cars is one of the worlds worst cars mated to part of a plane to become the AVE Mizar. It was a project by a former Northrop engineer in 1973 to develop a flying car, It consisted of a Cessna Skymaster rear attached to the Ford Pinto with production scheduled to start in 1974. AVE planed to sell the Mizar for between US $18,300 and US$29,000. A few prototypes were built but the project ground to a halt when the developers of the Mizar were killed when the the wings of the craft broke away from the car mid flight resulting in a fiery crash. This would have to be the first time a Ford Pinto’s explosion was not caused by someone ramming them from behind. The National Transportation Safety Board reported in addition to poor design and loose parts, that bad welds were partly responsible for the crash, a bad idea was naturally assumed.
Entry Filed under: Aircraft, Concept, Weird Car | Tags: Worlds Worst Cars
5 Comments Add your own
1. Al | March 21st, 2008 at 2:43 am
Back in the fifties and early sixtys, a Celebrity named George Gobles regulary flew a car plane in his TV show.
It folded into a trailer he pulled behind afteranding.
That was the only one I ever seen. I don’t have any idea what it was or what it’s name was.
2. Wattsy | March 22nd, 2008 at 3:11 am
The only actor we could find out about was Bob Cummings owned a Taylor Aerocar about the same time. Was it this one http://www.transeum.com/weird-car/the-taylor-aerocar.html
3. Brian Campbell a.k.a. The Cookieboy | February 15th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
The Flying Pinto 2 Has Been Found!
On my website you can see updated information and a short video produced by Galpin Motors of California about the AVE Mizar Flying Pinto. The video features the flying Pinto and a second Pinto used in during the filming of the promotional video. Also see the story of how Pintony and Cookieboy found The Flying Pinto 2 from the video and the ongoing adventure to this great find and piece of history.
4. Pintony | February 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 am
I have 1 of the Galpin made flying Pintos
Still has the original paint and is in fairly good condition considering it is 36years old.
Go to cookieboystoys.com to see the video!!!
From Pintony
5. Brian Campbell a.k.a. The Cookieboy | March 30th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
The History Of The AVE Mizar Flying Pinto
From the earliest newspaper articles in 1970 where Henry Smolinski started to share his idea with the world to it’s unfortunate end in 1973 with the crash of the AVE Mizar Flying Pinto. I have gathered as much information as I can in hopes of telling the most complete story possible of this fantastic idea, concept and implementation of a dream.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All commments are moderated and won't be shown until they are checked for spam.
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed