dezso molnar's flying car is a 2-seater gyrocopter

flying car: dezso molnar’s flying car is a 2-seater gyrocopter. molnar, who is an aeronautics engineer and pilot, was well aware of the fact he wanted to guide flying vehicles from the nature of his job. now, rather than making air-signals, he is signaling to the sky for his latest technology. conceived as ‘the first step to changing everything about how we think about street legal aircraft’, the ‘molnar G2’ is a high-performance flight-capable automobile, built to catalyze a new generation of innovators.

molnar’s design is based around merging a traditional ground-based vehicle with a gyrocopter, a popular flying machine that has been in use since the 1920s. the design protects against failures: if the engine cuts, the plane will float down, which could be useful if we want to avoid having broken-down flying vehicles dropping out of the sky.

the ‘G2’ is constructed using a steel and carbon-fiber frame paired with a stock suzuki GSX-R 600 motorcycle engine and carbon-steel propeller. a rear-mounted horizontal-axis propeller pushes air past the propeller to generate lift. for ground travel, the propeller disengages with the rotor and engages with the transmission, allowing the vehicle to achieve speeds of up to 200 mph. costing less than $35 USD an hour to operate, the gyrocopter is intended as a more cost-effective form of transport in comparison to helicopters or fixed-wing planes.

‘I don’t have the objective about creating ubiquity,’ dezso molnar says. ‘da vinci did one copy of the ‘mona lisa’, and it wasn’t for everybody, and it wasn’t like he had to make 500 of them, but it still has value. I see a lot of the machines that have been made as art pieces.’

molnar hopes that a proposed racing car league in the mojave desert will influence others to take on similar projects and inspire big new ideas, ‘those are the freaks that matter to me, are the ones that wanna take their 300 mph jet car out there on a saturday afternoon,’ explains the engineer and pilot. see designboom’s roundup of airborne cars here.

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