Boss Todd’s Garage, Episode 5: The 1921 Leyat Helica

[A 1985 Camaro IROC-Z squeals its tires, bursting onscreen to the sounds of Judas Priest’s “Breakin’ The Law”.]

BOSS TODD IS FUCKIN’ BACK, BITCHES!

I don’t give a fuck about the Super Bowl. Never have, never will. Ain’t never won it ONCE in my whole goddamn career. Fuckin’ fancy pricks. Bet they don’t even know how to rev-match like a BOSS. Dumping a clutch at redline feels just as good as any fuckin’ championship. Better than an 8 AM weekday beer or gettin’ sucked off by the Mrs. in the Applebee’s bathroom at some dumbass kid’s birthday party. You want the BOSS TODD lifestyle? You want speed at any cost, and consequences be fuckin’ DAMNED. And god damn, do I ever have the car for you this week if that’s what you’re going for.

THE LEYAT HELICA

Model Year: 1921

Total units produced: 30 (between 1919-1925)

Vehicle type: four-wheel, two-door, two-seater “plane without wings”

Engine: Harley-Davidson V-twin, air-cooled, 1000 cc, 18 hp, and various others

Drivetrain: none

Transmission: none

Gross weight: 625 lbs.

0-60 time: unknown

Top speed: 106 mph

Vehicle cost: $818 (without tires)

What makes this car interesting? 

Why would anyone ever buy a plane that couldn’t fly? The same reason people buy Teslas that can’t self-drive despite braying the concept all across the internet, I guess. Perhaps some people just want to find a way to feel special however they can.

Marcel Leyat was one of those clearly special individuals. A Frenchman with a background in aviation, the Helica came into existence some years after he had designed and built a series of airplanes used by the French military, including during the First World War. Leyat firmly believed, due to his background in aerodynamics, that typical automobiles of this era were terribly inefficient due to boxy, heavy bodies weighed down by unnecessary machinery.

Enter the Helica. Named after the ancient Greek helix, or screw, it featured a front-mounted propellor attached to a series of different engines, including old airplane and motorcycle variants from a number of different manufacturers. While there are some design discrepancies between the roughly 30 models that were ever produced, they all feature a few standard things: the propellor, of course, but also a sleek, aluminum-plated cabin featuring curved body panels – something that wouldn’t become standard fare until well into the 1930s. Every model also lacked a transmission or drivetrain – all of the power was generated exclusively by the propellor.

Even with just an 18-horsepower engine, the fact that this car was so light and so aerodynamic allowed it to reach speeds of over a hundred miles an hour while still getting over 48 miles per gallon. That’s an incredible feat for the early days of automotive design, no matter how you slice and dice it. Leyat only built about 30 total vehicles over a six-year period, and only sold 23 of them, before running out of money. Leyat claims he had hundreds of orders placed at the 1921 Paris Auto Show, but with the company already on poor financial ground at that time, Leyat clearly had no way of ever possibly delivering that many vehicles. The Helica, and other similar propellor cars, never really caught on as mainstream technology, and Leyat pursued other engineering projects instead, including planes and musical instruments.

What makes this car stupid?

This thing might be the most dangerous vehicle in the history of automotive transport. Let’s consider a few reasons:

• The propellor has virtually no protection. If you don’t have a woodchipper on hand and want to re-enact the famous scene from Fargo, this vehicle would be an ideal fit. Also, it impedes the driver’s view significantly – the head-on view is extremely important on narrow, winding European roads of a century ago.
• To start the car, the driver had to get out and pull a cord to get the block to turn over – just like an old outboard engine, lawnmower, or snowblower. Also, as soon as the propellor started turning, the car would move – forcing the driver to run alongside it and jump into the driver’s seat to take back control.
• The steering was hilariously inadequate; as Leyat came from building airplanes, the Helica lacked a steering wheel, opting instead for cable-driven rear-wheel steering. As anyone who’s ever driven a car without a functioning power steering system knows full well how demanding this is, this makes the choice of cables even more insane – especially when the car could top out at over 100 mph. Rollovers were a certainty, rather than a worst-case scenario.
• There’s basically no suspension to speak of. Unlike in the US, where the macadam-topped boulevard would soon become standard fare, most of the roads that Leyat tested his vehicles on still were paved with cobblestones. Once again, good luck to this driver.
• The noise. Dear god, the noise. Worse than some shithead teenager with a clapped-out Civic with a fart-can eBay Motors muffler added on. That propellor drone must have been absolutely maddening, especially in the models with an open top.

CAN YOU GET PUSSY IN THIS CAR? 

If you’ve figured out a way to do it, I’ll fuckin’ shake your hand, brother. Assuming it’s still attached to your body after doing the deed near that spinning prop.

How can BOSS TODD fix this thing? 

Them good ol’ bayou boys already solved it! Shit, you ever ripped around on one a’ them airboats? They put the prop in the BACK on those things. Need to do the same here. Frees up more space for sticking a few cases of cold ones in there too. Big ol’ tires too. Throw some 37s on that bitch and it’ll get you from the Superdome to Baton Rouge in like 45 minutes tops. JUST TRY ME!

BOSS TODD out, bitches. See you in hell.

[The Camaro burns out again, with “Breakin’ The Law” blaring once more.]

***

Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Banner image by The Maestro.