When the 30th Annual Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance convenes at historic Meadow Brook Hall in Rochester this week, it will indeed be a celebration. Of this area’s rich automotive history and heritage. And, of the art that moves us.

The first Concours d’Elegance or “Parade of Excellence” was staged in the 1920s as an elegant marketing effort in France.

The custom automobile coachbuilders and fashion couturiers of Paris were making luxury products of important design and wanted a new and different way to reach their markets. In an effort to create a unique way to reach the market, an idea was developed of a grand exhibition combining both automobiles and fashion.

Fashion models dressed in the latest Paris creations would drive new automobiles up to a reviewing stand. The automobiles tended to be luxury cars decked-out with custom coachwork. In many cases they were one-of-a-kind. The models would step out of the cars and fashion to the crowd. The cars and fashions were judged and awards given. The awards were based on beauty, design and style.

Before World War II, the Concours d’Elegance format was popular and became a premiere social event. The underlying objective was for manufacturers to reach the market for these beautiful high design products. Concours d’Elegance was one of the most elegant methods of selling products. The Concours d’Elegance was meant not only as a car show, but also as a total extravaganza of style.

Today, the Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance, one of the most prestigious automotive events in the world, has an objective that is a bit different than its historical Concours predecessors. The Meadow Brook Concours is by no means just a car show – it’s an entire week of events that celebrate the lifestyle and legacy of our automotive heritage. Scheduled events includes classic car shows, auctions, automotive art displays, memorabilia sales, social gala events, touring exhibitions and more.

Still, as always, the true celebration is the exhibition on Sunday, August 3. On the rolling lawn of automotive royalty, Meadow Brook Hall, top collectors from 36 states will proudly display their works of automotive art.

1938 Delahaye

A very special feature in 2008 is a car that can fly – literally. Those attending the Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance will enjoy the rare opportunity of seeing Ed Sweeney’s 1956 Aerocar, the only one of six that still flies.

The Aerocar is the only airplane in history certified for highway driving. It is easily converted from airplane to car, in minutes, by folding and detaching the wings. The folded wings can be towed, like a trailer, for driving from one destination to another. As a plane with a 34’ wingspan, it can achieve airspeeds greater than 110 miles per hour and has a cruising range over 300 miles. On the road, the 10’4” long car module can approach 70 miles per hour.

An Aerocar

The flying automobile is a valuable piece of automotive, aviation, TV and movie history. After World War II, many people envisioned an airplane in every garage in America's expanding suburbs. One of these visions took the form of Molt Taylor's Aerocar. The Aerocar was a "roadable" airplane certified for use as both a plane and an automobile. The prototype was completed in 1949 but not certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (later the Federal Aviaition Administration) until 1956.

Molt Taylor was a gifted aeronautical engineer. In 1946, while shopping for a plant in New Castle, Delaware, to build an amphibious sportplane he was then calling the Duckling, Taylor bumped into Robert E. Fulton Jr., soon to be heralded in Life magazine for his flying car, the Airphibian.

Taylor was impressed with Fulton's incarnation of a winged automobile. As Taylor recalled, “I saw it fly and watched him leave the wings and tail behind and drive off in the car. I thought that a good idea. But I can do better." Taylor reasoned that if the whole idea of a flying car was that it would give you the freedom to go where you pleased when you pleased, then leaving behind the flight components was a less than optimal engineering solution. His design put the wings, tail, and rear-mounted propeller into a trailer towed behind the car.

To keep the weight down, Taylor fashioned the car's outer panels out of fiberglass, years before the Corvette startled the automotive world with its composite skin. And, because the rear wheels were used for landing, the Aerocar employed what was then an automotive oddity - front wheel drive.

In 1961, Taylor struck a deal with Ling-Temco-Vought, a Dallas-based company. They'd build 1,000 Aerocars at a projected cost of about $8,500 apiece, provided he could round up 500 firm orders. In two weeks he collected 278 deposits of $1,000 each, but without another 222 orders, the deal fizzled.

Nine years later, Taylor's hopes rose again when Ford Motor Company took an interest in the Aerocar. Lee Iacocca sent Donald Petersen, a vice president of product planning and research, and Dick Place, a Ford executive with a pilots license, to meet with Taylor in Longview. Place's logbook dates his Aerocar flight to August 1970 and he was sufficiently impressed with both the flight and highway performance to suggest that Ford at least take the next step or two investigating the possibilities. To further the deal with Ford, Taylor approached federal transportation authorities for certification of the Aerocar. But, they insisted he comply with all of the new environmental regulations being levied on the auto industry that year. Adding the prohibitive cost and complexity of meeting the new federal standards for noise, air pollution, fuel economy, mufflers and windshields cooled the ardor Ford officials had once had for the car-plane concept. With that insurmountable barrier, Taylor's unique venture ended.

Taylor sold Aerocar, Serial No. 4, to TV actor Bob Cummings, who owned it from 1960 to 1965. The story goes that while delivering the Aerocar to Cummings, Taylor made a spur-of-the-moment stop at an Earl Scheib paint shop. After verifying that, yes, the $39.95 two-color rate was good for any car, Taylor had them match the yellow and green colours of NutraBio, the vitamin company that sponsored "The New Bob Cummings Show," on which the Aerocar would thereafter regularly appear during the 1961-62 television season.

The Aerocar then progressed through four more owners, none of whom actually flew it. An owner in Illinois, who had a chain of hamburger stands, used the Aerocar in parades for publicity. His sons also drove the car to high school everyday, minus the detachable wings. It was then stored in a building that collapsed on it.

Sweeney purchased the Aerocar in 1988, when he spotted an ad in Trade-A-Plane, but his connection to the Aerocar extended back to 195, when a young Ed Sweeney was looking for a place to fly model planes. He ended up at Taylor’s private airstrip in Longview, Washington. He and Taylor quickly struck up a friendship, and it wasn’t long until Taylor gave Sweeney his first flying lesson in the left seat of the Aerocar he now owns today. It would seem that Sweeney was destined to carry on for Taylor, who died in 1995.

Sweeney’s flying automobile is one of the many not-to-be-missed sights at the 2008 Meadow Brook Concours d’Elegance. For additional information, including a schedule of events, go to www.mbconcours.org.