Rodney Thomson's Flying Automobile — Edwardian Retro-Futurist Aircraft Car, c.1910
A sense of breathless optimism and mechanical wonder radiates from this meticulously rendered pen-and-ink drawing of a wheeled biplane-automobile hybrid soaring above a pastoral English landscape. Two goggled aviators sit confidently in an open automobile chassis suspended beneath canvas wings and a forest of struts and wire bracing. In the distance, identical flying machines dot the sky, suggesting a near-future world where the roads have moved skyward. The intricate cross-hatching captures every rivet and spoke with obsessive Edwardian precision.
The most delightfully audacious detail is the fully intact automobile — complete with spoked wheels and a radiator — serving as the fuselage of a functional biplane, as if someone simply bolted wings onto a Model T and called it aviation.
“DRAWN BY RODNEY THOMSON”
