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Pompous or pimpish? The Bristol Freighter airplane once allowed unusual carry-on luggage: Your car

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[image by Anthony Cowland]

After World War II, a Royal Air Force pilot and Wing Commander named Taffy Powel hacked a Bristol 130 Bombay bomber plane for an unusual purpose: Carrying cars across the English Channel. Why zip into Paris on holiday if you can't take your Austin-Healey with you?

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His resultant creation, the Bristol Freighter, had its first cross-channel car-carrying flight in 1948 and became a commercial success. It could only carry two cars, but its successor, the Bristol Superfreighter, had a longer nose and could fit three.

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Despite providing service well into the 1960s, the Superfreighter remains fairly obscure and unheard-of...which is probably the only reason 50 Cent doesn't have one yet. Maybe one of you can re-Tweet this to him and I can get another blog post out of this in six months.

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