The Aerocar 2000 was a proposed

flying car A flying car or roadable aircraft is a type of vehicle which can function both as a road vehicle and as an aircraft. As used here, this includes vehicles which drive as motorcycles when on the road. The term "flying car" is also sometimes u ...

under development in the early 2000s in the United States. The Aerocar 2000 was designed by Ed Sweeney, who was inspired by

Moulton Taylor Moulton B. "Molt" Taylor (September 29, 1912 – November 16, 1995) was an American aeronautical engineer famed for his work designing, developing, and manufacturing on a small scale one of the first practical flying cars, the Aerocar. Life ...

Aerocar Aerocar International's Aerocar (often called the Taylor Aerocar) was an American roadable aircraft designed and built by Moulton Taylor in Longview, Washington in 1949. Although six examples were made, it never entered large-scale production. I ...

of the 1950s (and is the owner of the only still-flying example of this vehicle). The Aerocar 2000 consisted of a removable wings, tail, and powerplant "flight module" added to a modified

Lotus Elise The Lotus Elise is a two-seat, rear-wheel drive, mid-engined roadster conceived in early 1994 and released in September 1996 by the British manufacturer Lotus Cars. The Elise has a fibreglass body shell atop its bonded extruded aluminium chassi ...

roadster.

Comparison to original Aerocar

In conception, this was far closer to the

AVE Mizar The AVE Mizar (named after the star Mizar) was a roadable aircraft built between 1971 and 1973 by Advanced Vehicle Engineers (AVE) of Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California. The company was started by Henry Smolinski and Harold Blake, both graduates o ...

of the early 1970s than to Taylor's designs, the vehicle portions of which were purpose-designed and built. Another difference with the original Aerocar (and similarity to the Mizar) is that the flight module is not designed to be taken away from the airfield. Finally, while the Aerocar used the one engine to drive both the road wheels and the propeller, the Aerocar 2000 (again like the Mizar) uses two separate engines. In the Aerocar 2000's case, the flight engine is a twin-turbocharged V-8 motor from a

Lotus Esprit The Lotus Esprit is a British sports car that was built by Lotus Cars at their Hethel factory in England between 1976 and 2004. It was among the first of designer Giorgetto Giugiaro's polygonal "folded paper" designs. Background In 1970 Tony ...

. A far lighter three-cylinder engine and gearbox from a

Chevrolet Sprint The Suzuki Cultus is a supermini car produced by the Japanese manufacturer Suzuki from 1983 to 2016. The nameplate is currently used as a rebadged second-generation Suzuki Celerio in Pakistan since 2017. It was first presented at the 25th Tok ...

is to be installed in the road module to power the vehicle on the ground.

Specifications (Aerocar 2000, as designed)

References

External links

* {{Flying cars Homebuilt aircraft Roadable aircraft Abandoned civil aircraft projects of the United States High-wing aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft