72-Year Old Russian Pilot Builds Flying Car [Video]
The zany ZAZ takes to the skies! Ex-pilot Valery Bulgakov turned this 1987 ZAZ Tavria into an airworthy flying machine, through hard work, acres of sheetmetal, and lofty Russian ingenuity.
ZAZ cranked out thousands of Tavrias in the 1980s and 1990s, and aside from a few examples that must have been thrown off a cliff under various circumstances, none of them ever offered spacious aerial views. But Bulgakov welded wings onto the front fenders and rear windows, installing ailerons and painting them in patriotic Russian colors in order to tackle the skies: the flying car (of the future) can get up to 10 feet in the air, for a distance of 600 feet.
While this is a bit off from even, say, the efforts of the Kalinin K-7, Bulgakov doesn’t expect his car—which goes 0-60 in an FAA-unapproved 20 seconds—to revolutionize transportation. He uses the vehicle to train aspiring pilots: and given their familiarity with car controls, seems like a natural progression before tackling the challenges of the Yak-130.
Click the jump to see the flying Tavria in action. Translator not included, however.
[Source: Discovery Channel]
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