The Flying Wombat on Display!

Automotive historian, writer, publisher and true sizzling rodder, Ken Gross just finished organizing the world’s best screen of Art Deco automobiles and motorcycles referred to as ‘Rolling Sculpture’ on show at the Vero Seashore Museum of Artwork. From the museum catalog: “This exhibition provides a pick group of unusual cars and motorcycles that demonstrate how auto designers translated the popular new concept of aerodynamic efficiency into interesting machines that seemed as even though they had been transferring although at rest.”

There are a great deal of breathtaking cars (20 vehicles and two motorcycles) on display screen, but the one I’m most fired up about is the Phantom Corsair aka ‘The Flying Wombat”. It is been on show at the Countrywide Automobile Museum in Reno for lots of a long time but they seldom enable it out, so for individuals of you in the Southeast region, here’s your probability to eyeball it in human being. Developed in 1938 at a prototype by millionaire Rust Heinz of the H.J. Heinz foods dynasty, the Corsair was intended to be the confined-production custom made car or truck of the potential. Pasadena coachbuilders Bohman & Schwartz designed the large coupe with seating for 6, as the driver was flanked by passengers on every facet. The value to develop this display-stopper was a whopping $24,000 at the time, which would be approximately half a million bucks these days. The approach was to sooner or later establish six manufacturing cars and trucks at a price of $12,000 just about every, with interest drummed up by the Flying Wombat. Sadly, Heinz was killed in a car accident in the summer time of 1939 at only 24 many years previous, leaving the prototype as the only automobile at any time constructed.