Here is a photo of a genius at work, the fevered visionary who gave us the flying car which was supposed to define our future. In his drafting room, he had a sign which said “SIMPLICATE AND ADD MORE LIGHTNESS.” His name was William Bushnell Stout.

The image comes from a wonderful collection of Mechanix Illustrated scans – in this case from November 1943. In some respects Stout was right -

“Consolidated-Vultee has already presented for public consideration three models: the Aerocar, or flying automobile for family tours and trips; the Roadable airplane, for distance flights coupled with short trips on the ground; and the Helibus a new type of helicopter, so versatile that in addition to moving in any wanted direction it will stand still in the air and land on a tennis court.”

Born in 1880, he worked his way through engineering school by writing about mechanical toys, which he had built as a child. He was by turns a journalist – he started ‘Aviation Weekly’, for instance – and an engineer for car and aircraft companies. Abandoning the exterior struts and wires of early biplanes, he pioneered the development of all-metal aircraft sustained by interior bracing.

By 1919, he had built this -

It was called the Stout Batwing, and it was successfully tested by Bert Acosta, the legendary flying hellraiser.

When his torpedo aircraft prototype crashed due to pilot error, he was finished financially. But…

“He banged out a letter which he sent to 100 leading businessmen, explaining it was the first of a series demonstrating the principles of flight. Enclosed was a post-card with the suggestion that the reader attach a paper clip to one edge to show that the center of gravity is at the center of air pressure. “Do this experiment personally,” the letter suggested, “and it will teach you more in half an hour than a month’s, book reading. If you have any trouble getting true flight, call me up and I will bring over my trained card and clip and show you how it is done.”

Stout asked the recipients of the letters to contribute $1,000 each for the construction of a commercial all-metal plane. “You may never get a cent of your money back,” he warned, “but you will have one thousand dollars worth of fun. It’s a gamble, but you can afford it.”

That is real panache, pure and simple.

“.. it was joining forces with Henry and Edsel Ford that really got things going. The Fords built Stout a new facility in Dearborn, Michigan, and the Stout Metal Airplane Co was established as a division of The Ford Motor Company. The result was the 2-AT, the first all-metal aircraft built in the USA, which had exceptional load carrying capabilities. in 1925, Henry Ford decided to buy out William Stout’s share of the company, and Stout became the head of an independent airline while still developing aircraft. Stout Air Services operated Ford 4-AT Tri-Motor airliners, and was the first airline to offer in-flight meais (sandwiches and coffee) and employ uniformed Flight Escorts. Stout’s aircrew also wore the company uniforms of blue trimmed with gold braid, a suggestion by Henry Ford that it would “lend dignity to their profession.”

Stout sold his airline to the newly-formed United Airlines and turned his mind to other things.

He built the experimental Stout Skycar I, which couldn’t be driven but resembled a car in the design of the controls. The model in the photo above looks very similar.

Now we get to the bit I really love..


Early design drawing by Stout, 1932, kept in the Detroit Historical Museum. Note the golf clubs.

You have to think late jazz age. Art deco. An explosion in design. William Bushnell Stout wanted to build the private car of the future. Buckminster Fuller had just designed his Dymaxion car, which looked like a three-wheeled jellybean – too odd for the public to contemplate.

Stout’s engineering principles were similar to Fuller’s. Get rid of the running boards so the car could be wider. Independent suspension. A rear engine pushed right to the extreme back, with plenty of space to deploy rows of seats. A certain affection for a van-like shape. Chain drive.

In Stout’s case, this collided with a certain deco attraction for all things Egyptian. The car was called the Stout Scarab, and looked like a kombi built by the pharaohs.

There were only ever nine of these very expensive cars, so the survivors are lovingly maintained. Cars at large has a wonderful collection of images. The car looks like this:

The egyptological front may well have inspired Agatha Christie to design Hercules Poirot. From the side, it does not add dignity to its rich passengers -

But inside, it had a kind of minimalist aluminium luxury -

Yes, the seats were not anchored to the floor. Apparently Stout would advertise the stability of the car by putting a brimming glass on that tray and driving from town to town. He is said to have crossed the US in one of his cars from coast to coast six times.

The particular car in the last photo

“was sold to a French publishing magnate and spent its entire life in France, supposedly used by General Eisenhower in North Africa and then by General DeGaulle. It was then used by a circus to house monkeys until Philippe Charbonneaux, a French automotive designer, bought it in the early sixties for his museum”

As The Independent says of the design:

“… never mind the outside: the Scarab was all about the interior. The driver’s seat was fixed into position, but the other four seats were extremely versatile. The rear bench seat had cushions that could be rearranged into a full-length bed, the front passenger seat could swivel round and slide to face the rear, and a fold-down table was hinged on the left of the interior for meetings.

“1936 Popular Mechanics Drawing”

There were only two doors, one for the driver on the left and another to the rear compartment, usually at the back on the right. I say “usually”, because no two Scarabs were alike. Stout lined up some impressive backers for his ground-breaking automobile, including Willard Dow of Dow Chemical and chewing-gum king Philip Wrigley, but his various engineering preoccupations seemed to distract him from launching it properly.

The Scarab garnered acres of press coverage, and Stout said he would build 100 a year, but at $5,000 – when a luxurious and ultra- modern Chrysler Imperial Airflow cost $1,345 – no normal person would pay this hefty premium for innovation. In fact, just nine Scarabs were made, all different, and Wrigley even exchanged his shares in the Stout Motor Car Corporation to get his – it was used until 1964 as a beach car at the Wrigleys’ Lake Geneva holiday retreat.

The media loved the Scarabs. They were often used by Hollywood stars, such as the pre-war American radio entertainers Al Pearce and Edward Bowes….

Somewhere in here he found time to design a pioneering Pullman Railcar, and a bus. He apparently made over a million dollars – a fortune in the 1930’s. Time Magazine produced a contemporary account of what happened next -

“Few months ago the pinwheel brain of U. S. industry’s most whimsical and unpredictable inventor threw out another spark. Convinced that what the U. S. needs and wants is a good, low-cost, small plane, mop-haired, 59-year-old William Bushnell Stout decided to re-enter aviation. Already mocked-up last week in his faded yellow Stout Engineering Laboratories in Dearborn, Mich, was a snug two-seater slated for mass production at about $3,000. (Specifications: four cylinder, 75-h.p. motor, 450-mile cruising range, tricycle landing gear, controls so limited that the pilot will not be able to pull the ship high enough for a tail spin). By next spring, Inventor Stout announced, his new planes will be rolling off the assembly line at the rate of one a day.”

The article is dated Monday, September 25th, 1939.

Stout still hoped the Scarab would come back after the war, and built a new version from fibreglass. But he never found a manufacturing partner – and I don’t see much evidence in his work that he really cared about the problem of production to a viable price in a mass market.

By now, in his late sixties, he was ready to retire, although he apparently worked on an ornithopter. He died in 1956.

His work is enshrined in the history of aviation, and trains for that matter. But he had little effect on the production of cars. But he must have felt vindicated by the Kombi, while vans and people-movers ensure that his notion of contained space with wheels pushed to the corner is central to the industry today.

Beneath the strangely egyptological approach is a very interesting idea. It seems

“Stout was a critic of the teardrop form adopted by Fuller and Bel Geddes. According to Stout, the effect of cross-winds on a true teardrop is to create a vacuum on the lea-side. Unlike an airplane, an automobile needs to stay on the road, and cannot afford to drift sideways to compensate in the presence of crosswinds. Therefore, according to Stout (who was Fuller’s friend) streamlined vehicles ought to resemble turtles, crabs or beetles, rather than birds or fish.”

Hence, the name and notion of a scarab.

What would the world look like if Stout had been able to commercialise his car, the first and most visionary beetle of them all?

There is video of a Scarab in motion here.

And the Detroit Historical Museum has a large amount of Stout material online, including his exquisite working drawings, commercial memorabilia from the airline, models and even a radio interview.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 12:44 am and is filed under entertainments, visual media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.