K2. The 7000-Meter High Flying Jungle and Mountain Machine
1991
Object, 90 x 215 x 330 cm .
Materials: aluminium, styropor, polyurethane, nylon, kevlar, rubber, perspex, felt
Collection: Courtesy The Deweer Collection, Otegem.
'It had to be something without propellers, without wings, so as not to collide with anything. I though of a kind of air pillow, of sorts...' - Panamarenko
Following the poetic Prova Car in 1967 and the Polistes racing car in 1975, Panamarenko started to build a hover car in 1991. The idea arose during a trip to Peru in September 1990, when he decided to make a hover car to fly between the trees: a flying machine without rotor blades or wings. K2 has a polystyrene body shaped like a rectangular inflatable mattress with rounded corners, an open cockpit with a Plexiglas windscreen in the middle, and four Kevlar fans in the corners. The machine is powered using the same principle as his flying rucksacks: several propellers consisting of two blades, each encased in a separate housing, deliver powerful air displacement via nozzles. The driver controls the speed of the central engine using a joystick. The four propellers, which suck in air and then blow it out again via the four
curved nozzles, are located to the left and right, front and rear of the vehicle. The nozzles also act like a fender to shield the propeller blades.
