Tools:  

Oldest 'Flying Car' Auction This Weekend

Frank Skroback’s ‘flying car,’ designed and built in 1935, with 7-ft-wide wings. (courtesy: OldCarsWeekly.com)

March 11, 2010 — What’s billed as the oldest original flying car in existence will be sold this weekend at the Georgia-based auction company, Red Baron, in Atlanta. According to OldCarsWeekly.com's sister website, AntiqueTrader.com, the flying car is Frank Skroback’s stab at a roadable “aircraft” (it never flew), built in 1935. Skrobach was a retired industrial technician and electrician from Syracuse, New York, who got the idea for a flying car while studying the concepts of the French furniture-maker-turned-aircraft-designer Henri Mignet, inventor of the tandem wing monoplane.

Skroback wanted to modify Mignet’s design, to build a multi-purpose vehicle. He envisioned a craft that could be used on the ground or in the air, for going from house to house using the roads as runways. His design has six fixed 7-ft-wide wings aimed at lifting a 21-foot-long tubular steel fuselage and spruce wing panels, all wrapped in linen.