It's plane. It's a car. Actually, it's kind of both.
By: Michael Chesney
Updated: July 21, 2010
It's plane. It's a car. Actually, it's kind of both.
The Maverick is on a 1,300-mile journey from central Florida to Wisconsin and one of the biggest aviation shows in the world.
"You've got to be as strong as a car but as structural sound as an airplane," said Steve Saint.
Saint is the man behind this crazy-looking machine.
The idea flew into his brain after growing up in the Amazon.
"I know what it's like to live in a place with no roads. You either walk by trail, pull a canoe or fly."
Saint, and the rest of team with Indigenous People's Technology and Education Center, or ITEC, are aiming to fix that.
"[It's] so that people in South America or Africa can take their people to their own clinics, their own doctors and do it themselves," he said.
They'll need financial co-pilots to make that happen.
So, they're driving the maverick all 1,300 miles to the show to show off the Maverick, because it's both air legal and street legal.
"There's a license plate on the back," said Saint. "That's a car license plate. And on the side, it's got a registration number from the FAA."
He adds the car-plane is incredibly easy to use.
"Anybody who can drive an automatic transmission car can learn to fly this in a day."
And, like the Delorean had to hit 88 miles per hour in the movie "Back to the Future," the Maverick's builder, Steve Buer, said here the key is 40.
"Once you're driving along with the propeller with the chute inflated at 40 miles per hour, you will go up in the air. You fly at 40. You accelerate you up. You decelerate you down. And you land at 40 miles per hour."
Saint envisions a ton of possible uses for the maverick right here in North America, too.
First and foremost, a transportation system heading where - roads, it won't need roads.
"We have to embrace the highway in the sky."
There's actually a book you can get that chronicles Saint's life in the Amazon.
It's called "End of the Spear."
And there's a movie by the same name.
Click here to learn more about the car-plane and to follow the ITEC team on their journey.
