ERCO ERCOUPE A WONDERFUL LITTLE PLANE!

With its low wing, tricycle gear and safe car-like handling, the Ercoupe was a genuinely revolutionary aircraft.

THE ERCOUPE'S DEVELOPMENT goals were ambitious and revolutionary for the 1930s. A two-seater plane that would be safe, and aboveall, easy to fly. It had to be stall and spin proof and have a cruise speed of 100 mph - with just a 65 hp engine.

The development of such a plane began in the 1930s, when a small group of engineers at the NACA Laboratories started a private study that resulted in the building of the W-1 and W-1A prototypes having the these for then, very unconventional features:

1. The tricycle landing gear with castering nose wheel.

2. Strong longitudinal and lateral stability with limited upward elevator travel to prevent loss of control due to stalling and spinning.

3. Flaps to reduce the stall speed.

4. Dual controls for instruction.

Development

In the 1930s light aircraft designers were stuck in the paradigm of rag and tube taildraggers with tandem seating and control sticks.

Stall-spin accidents and ground loops were common so aerodynamicist Fred Weick began experimenting with aircraft designs that would eliminate them. Weick's first design was called simply the W1 and it won a competition for a stall and spin-proof plane. On the strength of his prize-winning design, he partnered with Engineering Research Company (ERCO) and changed his design to a low-wing model that became the ERCO Ercoupe.

The first flight was in 1937, with production following immediately. The 75-horsepower machines were inexpensive and a step above virtually everything else on the market. As the Great Depression ended, 112 were built, but production was stopped by World War II.

With the end of the war, Ercoupe joined the boom and bust of 1946 to 1948. Five thousand Ercoupes, with horsepower from 75 to 90, were rolled out of the factory in the two years before it closed.