Dream cars have long held us in their grip. Designers with a vision for the future often seek unusual solutions to building a car.
In 1937, Paul M. Lewis had a peculiar vision for the car of the future. He designed and built a front-wheel-drive, three-wheeled Airomobile. The teardrop body was streamlined and aerodynamic. Despite some interest in the vehicle, the Airomobile never went into production. It is on display at the National Automobile Museum (Harrah’s) in Reno, Nevada.
Lewis kept dreaming about unusual cars with airplane shapes. In the late 1960s he designed another radical vehicle called the Fascination. A propeller drove the three-wheeled prototype, but the propeller failed during a demonstration run and a Volkswagen engine driving the rear wheels became the source of motivation. A second front wheel was added.
Lewis created the Highway Aircraft Corporation. A production arrangement was made with a manufacturer of tractor cabs in Gurley, Nebraska, but a dispute arose. Lewis acquired a building in Sidney, Nebraska, and three vehicles were built. Fiberglass bodies were fabricated in Lincoln and shipped to Sidney.
Five Fascinations were built in all, and Keith and Eileen Carpenter of Parker, Colo., own three of them.
So how did the Carpenters discover their first Fascination? It began one Sunday morning about thirty years ago when Keith Carpenter spotted a black-and gold, airplane-shaped car sitting on the lot of Vern Hagestad’s Volkswagen dealership in suburban Denver. The Carpenters whipped a U-turn and went back to check out the weird black and gold “car” called the Fascination.
“Boy, I’d like to own that someday,” Keith said to Eileen.
About 10 years later, the Carpenters were sharing their weekly Sunday breakfast with a friend who told them he bought a very unusual car at a storage auction. He took them to see it, and there, on a trailer, was the same black-and-gold car they had seen 10 years earlier. It was basically intact, but the long tails, although still with the car, had been sawed off because they were too long for the storage facility. The windshield was also cracked.
Their friend put the car back into storage, and the Carpenters bought it when he succumbed to cancer 20 years ago.
The Carpenters’ black-and-gold Fascination is car No. 1, the original prototype that was built in Denver, and it has been completely restored. The Carpenters have acquired car No. 2 and car No. 3. The red and white car that you see here is No. 2, and it is powered by a four-cylinder Renault engine. Cars No. 3 and 4 also had Renault engines. Car No. 5, which the Carpenters also own, has never been fully finished. It has a V-6 engine and the transaxle from an Oldsmobile Toronado.
Do they drive it? “No,” Eileen Carpenter said, “it’s a trailer queen. We don’t drive it because it simply creates too much havoc the way people gawk and pay attention to it.”
