Wiltshire's flying car is back home (From Swindon Advertiser)

Flying car team come back down to earth

7:16am Tuesday 10th March 2009 in News

A team of adventurers who journeyed to Timbuktu in a flying car, including its Dorset inventor, have arrived home in the UK.

The Skycar Expedition arrived in the west African city 43 days after setting off from London in a sand buggy travelling 4,000 miles by road and air.

The two-seater Skycar was devised by inventor Gilo Cardozo, 29, from Dorset, who joined pilot Neil Laughton as co-pilot for the African leg of the trip.

The engineer's firm, Parajet, is based in Mere, Wiltshire, and manufactures the industrial paramotors that propel the Skycar once it is airborne.

With the help of a parachute and a giant fan-motor, Mr Laughton soared over the Pyrenees and across the nine-mile Straits of Gibraltar.

The ex-SAS officer then flew over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and above the Sahara desert.

The world's first biofuelled flying car, similar to a microlight, completed 10 flying missions during the six week expedition and arrived in Timbuktu on February 25.

They have now each made their way back to the UK, via the more traditional routes by plane and by land.

But there were a few hair-raising moments along the way.

"We are delighted to have completed our mission to fly-drive from London to Timbuktu in the world's first road legal flying car," said Mr Laughton, who has scaled the highest mountains on seven continents and trekked at the North Pole. "Despite a few near misses - landing in the sea and another into a tree - the highlight for me was an extraordinary 15-minute flight from Europe to North Africa, crossing the Straits of Gibraltar."