{"id":23268609,"date":"2026-09-18T15:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/convair-model-118-convaircar-wrong-fuel-gauge-1947\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T15:34:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:34:52","slug":"convair-model-118-convaircar-wrong-fuel-gauge-1947","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/convair-model-118-convaircar-wrong-fuel-gauge-1947\/","title":{"rendered":"ConvAirCar: The Flying Car Killed by the Wrong Fuel Gauge"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>On 18 November 1947 a test pilot took off from San Diego in a car with an aeroplane bolted to the roof, and discovered somewhere over the mud flats that he had almost no aviation fuel on board. He had checked the fuel gauge before departure. It was the wrong one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>He had read the gauge for the twenty-five horsepower Crosley engine that drove the car\u2019s wheels, not the one for the hundred-and-ninety horsepower Lycoming that turned the propeller. Three days after its first flight, the ConvAirCar was in the mud.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:18px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Aircraft<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar, also called the Hall Flying Automobile<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Designer<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Theodore P. &ldquo;Ted&rdquo; Hall<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Registration<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">NX90850<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Car engine<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">25 hp Crosley, rear-mounted, driving a plastic-bodied four-seat car<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Flight engine<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">190 hp Lycoming O-435C, in the detachable wing unit<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Wingspan<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">34 ft 5 in (10.49 m)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Cruise speed<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">125 mph (201 km\/h)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Production plan<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">160,000 units at a projected $1,500 each<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Built<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Two, the second rebuilt around the first one&rsquo;s wing<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Fate<\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#0d1117;vertical-align:top\">Programme cancelled in 1948<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Not a stunt \u2014 a business plan<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>It is tempting to file the ConvAirCar under eccentric post-war whimsy. The numbers say otherwise. Consolidated Vultee, shortly to become Convair, was a serious manufacturer chasing the post-war aviation boom, and it planned to build <strong>160,000<\/strong> of these at around $1,500 apiece.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The business model was cleverer than the aeroplane. You would own the car. The wing, tail and flight engine would live at the airport and be rented, bolted on when you wanted to fly and left behind when you did not. A four-seat family car during the week, an aircraft at the weekend, without paying to own the expensive half.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/convaircar-model-118-wing-removal.jpg\" alt=\"The ConvAirCar wing and tail unit being detached from the car body\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The whole idea in one photograph: the wing, tail and aero engine lift away and stay at the airport. The car drives home. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<p>Ted Hall had been working on the idea since before the war, when Consolidated unsuccessfully pitched a flying car for commando raids. His first postwar attempt, the two-seat Model 116, flew on 12 July 1946 and completed 66 test flights. The Model 118 was the grown-up version: bigger, four seats, a plastic car body, and far more power upstairs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Two fuel gauges, one cockpit<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Here is the design flaw that no amount of engineering talent had caught. The machine had two completely separate engines with two completely separate fuel systems, and therefore two fuel gauges, sitting in front of a pilot who was also a driver.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Test pilot Reuben Snodgrass first flew NX90850 in November 1947. On the 18th, on a one-hour demonstration flight, the Lycoming ran dry. He put it down near San Diego, destroying the car body and damaging the wing, and walked away with minor injuries. He had reportedly departed with little or no aviation fuel aboard, having checked a gauge that showed full \u2014 the car\u2019s.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Flying Auto Crashes; Lands in California Mud Flats &mdash; Pilot Is Only Bruised.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>The New York Times<\/strong> &mdash; Headline, 19 November 1947<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>Read that headline the way 1947 read it. Not &ldquo;prototype suffers fuel-system incident during flight test&rdquo;. <em>Flying auto crashes.<\/em> The public had been sold a car that flies, and the car that flies had fallen out of the sky on its third day.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/convaircar-model-118-over-san-diego.jpg\" alt=\"Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar airborne over California\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The ConvAirCar airborne. Cruise was a genuine 125 mph, and by every account it flew perfectly well. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">It flew again, and it was already over<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Convair salvaged what it could. The same wing was fitted to another car body and the rebuilt machine flew again on 29 January 1948, piloted by W. G. Griswold. Technically the programme was alive. Commercially it was finished: the enthusiasm had gone out of it, and Convair cancelled.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Rights reverted to Hall, who set up his own company to carry on. Nothing reached production. Of the 160,000 ConvAirCars planned, the world got two, and one of those was mostly the other one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The failure was not aerodynamic<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>What sinks the ConvAirCar is not that it was a bad aircraft. It cruised at 125 mph and flew acceptably. It is that nobody had thought hard enough about the human being sitting in it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Aviation has spent the eighty years since learning this lesson repeatedly and expensively: two similar controls that do different things, two similar gauges that mean different things, and a procedure that relies on the operator remembering which is which. The industry now has a name for it \u2014 design-induced error \u2014 and a whole discipline devoted to designing it out.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Every flying-car startup currently promising a machine that drives and flies inherits the same problem. Two modes, two sets of systems, one person. The ConvAirCar got there first, and found the sharp edge in three days.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: John Wegg, <\/em>General Dynamics Aircraft and their Predecessors<em> (Putnam, 1990); Bill Yenne, <\/em>The World&rsquo;s Worst Aircraft<em> (1993); The New York Times, 19 November 1947; San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What was the Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The ConvAirCar was a prototype flying car built by Convair in 1947. A four-seat car body with a 25 hp Crosley engine drove on the road; a detachable wing, tail and 190 hp Lycoming engine bolted on top for flight. Two were built.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why did the ConvAirCar crash?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Fuel exhaustion. The machine had two separate engines with two separate fuel systems and two gauges. On 18 November 1947 the pilot checked a gauge that read full, but it was the car engine\u2019s gauge, not the aircraft\u2019s. The Lycoming ran dry in flight.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did the ConvAirCar pilot survive?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Yes. Test pilot Reuben Snodgrass made a forced landing near San Diego and escaped with minor injuries. The car body was destroyed and the wing damaged. The New York Times reported the next day that the pilot was only bruised.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many ConvAirCars were built?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Two, and the second was rebuilt using the wing from the first after the accident. It flew again on 29 January 1948 piloted by W. G. Griswold, but Convair cancelled the programme shortly afterwards.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How many ConvAirCars did Convair plan to build?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A production target of 160,000 units was planned, at a projected price of about $1,500 each. Convair expected many to be bought by airports and rented out, with owners keeping only the car half.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How fast was the ConvAirCar?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It cruised at about 125 mph (201 km\/h) on the 190 hp Lycoming O-435C. Wingspan was 34 ft 5 in and gross weight 2,550 lb. By all accounts the aircraft flew perfectly well; the programme failed for other reasons.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was the Convair Model 116?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The Model 116 was Ted Hall\u2019s earlier and smaller flying car, a two-seater with a 26 hp rear engine and a detachable 90 hp Franklin-powered wing unit. It first flew on 12 July 1946 and completed 66 test flights before the larger Model 118 replaced it.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The ConvAirCar was a prototype flying car built by Convair in 1947. A four-seat car body with a 25 hp Crosley engine drove on the road; a detachable wing, tail and 190 hp Lycoming engine bolted on top for flight. Two were built.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why did the ConvAirCar crash?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Fuel exhaustion. The machine had two separate engines with two separate fuel systems and two gauges. On 18 November 1947 the pilot checked a gauge that read full, but it was the car engine\u2019s gauge, not the aircraft\u2019s. The Lycoming ran dry in flight.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did the ConvAirCar pilot survive?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes. Test pilot Reuben Snodgrass made a forced landing near San Diego and escaped with minor injuries. The car body was destroyed and the wing damaged. The New York Times reported the next day that the pilot was only bruised.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many ConvAirCars were built?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Two, and the second was rebuilt using the wing from the first after the accident. It flew again on 29 January 1948 piloted by W. G. Griswold, but Convair cancelled the programme shortly afterwards.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How many ConvAirCars did Convair plan to build?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A production target of 160,000 units was planned, at a projected price of about $1,500 each. Convair expected many to be bought by airports and rented out, with owners keeping only the car half.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How fast was the ConvAirCar?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"It cruised at about 125 mph (201 km\/h) on the 190 hp Lycoming O-435C. Wingspan was 34 ft 5 in and gross weight 2,550 lb. 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It first flew on 12 July 1946 and completed 66 test flights before the larger Model 118 replaced it.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/taylor-aerocar-molt-taylor-flying-car\/\">The Flying Car That Actually Flew<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/convair-xf-92a-delta-wing-prototype\/\">Convair XF-92A: The Delta Nobody Wanted to Fly<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/the-flying-car-just-took-its-biggest-step-yet\/\">The Flying Car Just Took Its Biggest Step Yet<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Convair planned 160,000 flying cars. It built two. The first came down three days after its maiden flight because the pilot read the car\u2019s fuel gauge.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":23268296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,666],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23268609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-history-and-legends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>ConvAirCar: Flying Car Killed by a Fuel Gauge | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Convair planned 160,000 flying cars and built two. 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