During the summer of 1968—and I’ll date myself here a little—I was putting the finishing touches on my first car. It was a 1956 Chevy rodded up with a 283, fuel-injection pistons, a Duntov cam, a 411 rear—the works. I could never get the fueling right and as was the custom in those days, I kept throwing carburetors at the problem until in a fit of supreme pathetic excess, I borrowed a friend’s Edelbrock manifold mounted with three two-barrel Holly carbs. That did it. It also yielded gas mileage of about 8 MPG which, even in the days of 28-cent-a-gallon gas, was unsustainable on my summer-job salary. My next car was a Volkswagen. An economist would call this price elasticity response, but I called it sanity.
Ever since, I’ve had a taste for economy and efficiency which is why I felt right at home at Pipistrel’s factory in Slovenia, where we visited in March.There, when we walked into one of the factory bays, I saw the airplane of my dreams: The Pipistrel Panthera. You’ll be able to see it, too, at Aero in April. This comes close to my ideal airplane not because it’s sleek—although it is that—or fast—it’s that, too—but because it’s efficient without giving up performance. At least on paper. The airplane is still in the prototype stage, so I can only judge it based on Ivo Boscarol’s estimates. Pipistrel, which is known as a manufacturer of ultralights and light sports, plans to certify this airplane as a full-up Part 23 four-place aircraft, its first such product.