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There really is an amazing cross-over between cars and airplanes in the 1930s, to the extent that General Motors bought an airline! (Disclaimer, I work for GM,

by csours 7y ago

There really is an amazing cross-over between cars and airplanes in the 1930s, to the extent that General Motors bought an airline! (Disclaimer, I work for GM, but I did not work for GM in the 1930s) Both airplanes and cars were very new, and they shared many design features and goals. Where did it all go wrong? For one small example, consider the weight penalty/bounty. These number are illustrative, not exact or proportional. Imagine that saving 1 gram of weight on an airplane would be worth 1 dollar over the lifetime of the airplane. In that case you would have a bounty of 1 dollar per gram; your engineers could spend that dollar to "add lightness" to the airplane. The purchase price would go up, but the lifetime cost of ownership would go down. For an automobile, the bounty might be 0.05 dollar per gram. Automobiles are getting lighter nowadays, but very slowly. So, if you try to make a car with the same structural components as an airplane, you may be paying a penalty of up to 0.95 dollars per gram relatively speaking! In other words, you're paying just as much for your flying car as you would have for an airplane, and now you have a vehicle that is bad at both being a car and being an airplane. This entirely leaves aside safety equipment and many other questions. --- One other thing to note is that many of the "streamlined" cars shown are actually aerodynamic disasters due to small trim pieces/headlights/etc; but they never actually got fast enough for it to really matter.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
I think the idea that there were shared design goals, was their fatal mistake. You illustrate several of these, thank you. The speed difference is another - streamlining mattered not at all for a car at the speeds they were generally going at that time. Further, a plane is always headed into the wind; cars are pinned to the road by friction and most often have cross-winds. There were tragic car rollover problems throughout the 30's because of this misconception/failure to recognize utterly different design goals. Generally the only thing in common was, a factory making chassis and shells. Other than the manufacturing technology, there was almost complete mismatch of design goals.
- csours 7y ago
  > "I think the idea that there were shared design goals, was their fatal mistake." Yes. If goals were vectors, cars and airplanes have many that align on the direction, but have VERY different magnitudes.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Prime movers and fuels also. Both the automobile and airplane ... took off ... atvirtually the same moment, once petroleum-based fuels and reciprocating, Otto-cycle engines existed. Power-to-weight matters more for aircraft, but it's a critical problem for both, along with range (fuel capacity) and reliability. Body design and aerodynamics aren't the only issue. Though also a bigger problem for aircraft. Materials (duraluminium), controls, aerodynamic theory, infrastructure (airports, navigation, traffic control, safety standards, incident investigations, etc.), are other key elements. Then came gas turbines. Auto engineers tried to apply them but they weren't a good fit.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Controls, maybe not so much? The road-impulse and 16ft lane limits of the auto, apply to a plane not at all. And so many pod-car designers didn't address controls at all. They just took a Ford chassis and made a new (wood!) frame and skin. Further, the auto price-point means the fancy materials were a no-go for a production car anyway. As for traffic control, safety, navigation - different as night and day. Good call.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      For controls: development, and especially, standardization. For aircraft, there's the matteer of movement in three dimensions, with speed, yaw, pitch, and roll controls, as well as communication, navigation, and cabin environment controls. Autos have only two dimensions of freedom and less complex requirements generally, but orders of magnitude more operators with orders of magnitude less training and oversight. Addressing user-base scale is its own complex problem.[1] To be clear, my list of key elements wasn't asserting equivalence between land vs. air craft, but adding them to fuels and engines as crucial enabling technologies. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Arguably, much of the increase in computer processing capacity has gone in to enabling ever less-skilled populations to make effective use of them.
pugworthy 7y ago
> I did not work for GM in the 1930s Thank you for this clarification
Animats 7y ago
many of the "streamlined" cars shown are actually aerodynamic disasters due to small trim pieces/headlights/etc; but they never actually got fast enough for it to really matter. When they did get fast enough for aerodynamics to matter, the designs looked very strange.[1] Dodge managed to sneak a car with a giant wing in back into NASCAR, and it beat everybody. So for a few years, all the players had wings. This caused a sales problem. NASCAR cars are supposed to be something like "stock" cars, and manufacturers have to sell some number of the things. The Dodge designer said “I showed the car to the head of sales at Dodge. He saw the wing and said, ‘I can’t sell that shit.’” So, after a few years, the "aero" cars were banned from NASCAR. [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30349118/eye-of-the-beholder-february-2020/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30349118/eye-of-th...
- chrismorgan 7y ago
  Sounds like UCI’s ban of recumbents in 1934, a sordid tale of political intrigue, commercial interests, wounded pride, and arguably bribery and corruption, which basically crippled the recumbent bicycle/tricycle industry, and all because they were better. I’m bitter about that because in most regards recumbent tricycles are just so much better than upright bicycles.

by csours 7y ago

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

I think the idea that there were shared design goals, was their fatal mistake. You illustrate several of these, thank you. The speed difference is another - streamlining mattered not at all for a car at the speeds they were generally going at that time. Further, a plane is always headed into the wind; cars are pinned to the road by friction and most often have cross-winds. There were tragic car rollover problems throughout the 30's because of this misconception/failure to recognize utterly different design goals. Generally the only thing in common was, a factory making chassis and shells. Other than the manufacturing technology, there was almost complete mismatch of design goals.

csours 7y ago
> "I think the idea that there were shared design goals, was their fatal mistake." Yes. If goals were vectors, cars and airplanes have many that align on the direction, but have VERY different magnitudes.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Prime movers and fuels also. Both the automobile and airplane ... took off ... atvirtually the same moment, once petroleum-based fuels and reciprocating, Otto-cycle engines existed. Power-to-weight matters more for aircraft, but it's a critical problem for both, along with range (fuel capacity) and reliability. Body design and aerodynamics aren't the only issue. Though also a bigger problem for aircraft. Materials (duraluminium), controls, aerodynamic theory, infrastructure (airports, navigation, traffic control, safety standards, incident investigations, etc.), are other key elements. Then came gas turbines. Auto engineers tried to apply them but they weren't a good fit.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Controls, maybe not so much? The road-impulse and 16ft lane limits of the auto, apply to a plane not at all. And so many pod-car designers didn't address controls at all. They just took a Ford chassis and made a new (wood!) frame and skin. Further, the auto price-point means the fancy materials were a no-go for a production car anyway. As for traffic control, safety, navigation - different as night and day. Good call.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    For controls: development, and especially, standardization. For aircraft, there's the matteer of movement in three dimensions, with speed, yaw, pitch, and roll controls, as well as communication, navigation, and cabin environment controls. Autos have only two dimensions of freedom and less complex requirements generally, but orders of magnitude more operators with orders of magnitude less training and oversight. Addressing user-base scale is its own complex problem.[1] To be clear, my list of key elements wasn't asserting equivalence between land vs. air craft, but adding them to fuels and engines as crucial enabling technologies. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Arguably, much of the increase in computer processing capacity has gone in to enabling ever less-skilled populations to make effective use of them.

pugworthy 7y ago

> I did not work for GM in the 1930s Thank you for this clarification

Animats 7y ago

many of the "streamlined" cars shown are actually aerodynamic disasters due to small trim pieces/headlights/etc; but they never actually got fast enough for it to really matter. When they did get fast enough for aerodynamics to matter, the designs looked very strange.[1] Dodge managed to sneak a car with a giant wing in back into NASCAR, and it beat everybody. So for a few years, all the players had wings. This caused a sales problem. NASCAR cars are supposed to be something like "stock" cars, and manufacturers have to sell some number of the things. The Dodge designer said “I showed the car to the head of sales at Dodge. He saw the wing and said, ‘I can’t sell that shit.’” So, after a few years, the "aero" cars were banned from NASCAR. [1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30349118/eye-of-the-beholder-february-2020/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a30349118/eye-of-th...

chrismorgan 7y ago
Sounds like UCI’s ban of recumbents in 1934, a sordid tale of political intrigue, commercial interests, wounded pride, and arguably bribery and corruption, which basically crippled the recumbent bicycle/tricycle industry, and all because they were better. I’m bitter about that because in most regards recumbent tricycles are just so much better than upright bicycles.