The Leyat Hélica - The plane without wings
#Blogpost

Marcel Leyat was a French inventor and founder of the car manufacturer, Leyat. He was born on March the 26th 1885 in Die and he died in 1986. He studied at the Ecole Centrale de Paris in 1907 and just a year after graduating he build his first vehicle, a biplane glider baptised “Quand Même”. Between 1908 and the start of World War 2 Leyat build thirty different types of aircrafts and a “car”.

The car was called the Hélica, it was basically a small plane without wings. The car would steer using its rear wheels and it was powered by a huge propeller at the front connected to a Scorpion engine producing 8bhp. The car needed to be as light as possible, they achieved this by building the entire body out of plywood, because of this the car only weighed 250kg (550 lb).

Because of its low weight the car proved to be very fast. In 1927 Leyat hit an impressive top speed of 171km/h (105mph) at the Montlhéry circuit in France driving a Hélica.
He later continued to experiment with the Hélica, he tried a variety of different proppellers with varying amount of blades.

Between 1919 and 1925 he managed to sell 30 units.

That’s all for now, have a nice day :)

Marijn M.