Human beings are very interesting creatures for a multitude of reasons, not least of which is our ability to come up with some really bad ideas and see them all the way to a predictable and horrible end. Filling the Hindenburg with explosive gas? Seemed like a hell of an idea at the time. Building a racing vehicle with a multi-thousand horsepower engine located at the driver’s feet that he can’t actually see around? Right as rain. Making a flying version of the Pinto? Sure, why the heck not. Selling liquid propellant rocket kits to anyone with the money to buy one? What could possibly go wrong? All of that stuff really happened but we’re mainly concerned with the flying pinto and liquid fuel rocket thing. Why? Because they seem like two of the worst ideas in history that also have an element of BangShifty coolness to them.
The flying Pinto was invented by Henry Smolinski and poetically he was killed in it too when one of the wing struts failed on a test flight and the resulting wing failure caused the flying car to auger into the ground. Basically the idea was to mount the back of a Cessna Skymaster plane to the rear of a Pinto where it could be attached and detached before and after landing. The car/plane crashed once before but the experienced test pilot didn’t make the mistake of trying to turn the craft after the strut failure. He just plunked it down in a bean field. Smolinsky committed the error of placing additional stress on that wing that had nothing to hold it up and down he and his passenger went. With him died the idea of the flying Pinto. Thankfully.
The challenger in this race to the bottom is Gene Middlebrooks and his company Turbonique that is still famous to this day for selling a small number of “rocket drag axles” for cars, liquid propellant rockets for use on go karts and other vehicles, and superchargers that were essentially powered by small liquid rocket motors. Some of the stuff still exists today, the old magazine ads are readily available all over the internet, and people like Jack McClure actually raced the stuff. Middlebrooks eventually was sent to prison on mail fraud charges because instead of sending people ready to run stuff, he was sending them half machined pieces that they needed to finish to have a working Turbonique part. The feds didn’t take kindly to this and he was sent to the cooler. Turbonique died along with his freedom. As if a flying Pinto weren’t bad enough, selling half cocked liquid fuel rockets and other devices that were of questionable construction at best doesn’t strike us as the most intelligent business plan in the world. Every once in a while a Turbonique kit will show up on eBay and sell for insane money….ironically enough that Middlebrooks probably could have kept his company running on.
BangShift Question Of The Day: What Is The Worse Idea – The Flying Pinto Or Turbonique?
Flying Pinto ! Hell the damn things were death traps on the ground so can you imagine the carnage that would of ensued had the Flying Pinto gone on the market ?
If ANY engineering skill had been applied to the Mizar (techincally, the airborne Pinto was the AVE Mizar) then there might have been half a shred of hope. A cage and proper mounting might have done wonders…it did actually fly, but the wing strut failure was because the wing strut was, according to witnesses, held in with sheet metal screws.
Anything designed to do two things usually does neither well.
To be fair, by the time of the Hindenberg, Germany had been flying hydrogen filled zeppelins for decades, including as bombers in WWI and a regular domestic and transatlantic airline. It worked surprisingly well.
The flying Pinto was kind of cool, and actually worked, until it fell apart. Had it been constructed a bit more robustly you might have had something. It’d bee pretty cool to be able to get some add on wings for a modern Focus, right?
I wonder if there’s a land speed class where a rocket axle would be legal?
I’d the rocket axle would the worse of the two ideas. A flying Pinto would have a very small market place, presumably, licensed pilots. However anyone with cash could buy and possibly make use of the rocket axle.
McClure made the little rockets work–saw him run–it looked totally insane–brave or crazy???
Turbonique is totally killer compared to the flying pinto. “No go”
both are very likely to explode. Turbonique wins for cool factor!!!
wait! wait! how about a Torbonique on a flying Pinto?