John Hill of Hill Auto Body Metal Co., Cincinnati, Ohio had built special racing car Engine Compartment on the 1932 Hill Arrow Plane bodies as well as engine cowlings and wheelpants for racing aircraft including the Granville Bros. Gee Bee Specials (Jimmy Doolittle) and the Roscoe Turner and Jimmy Wendell (Wendell-Williams) Specials. Hill Auto Body also made the engine cowlings and window frames for the first Panama Clipper, Christened by Eleanor Roosevelt.
The Arrow Plane was conceived and commissioned by Lyman Voelpel as a promotional vehicle to test his own ideas of a car of the future. Voelpel believed that front wheel drive, overhead valves, mid-engines, wide selection tires, and aerodynamic design would become common on production automobiles. The Arrow Plane is often mistaken for Buckmeister Fuller’s Dymaxion, but was actually built one year prior to the Dymaxion and unlike the Dymaxion, incorporated engineering concepts which were ultimately adopted throughout the automotive industry.
Hill Auto Body went on to build the Arrow Plane – inspired McQuay Norris streamliners, the Grove Laboratory land yacht and, in 1936, a gigantic streamliner for Bromo Seltzer on a bus chassis. Mr. Hill bought back several of the McQuay Norris vehicles and drove one from Cincinnati to Florida. Of all the Specials, automotive and aircraft, only one Norris McQuay and the original Arrow Plane have survived. The Arrow Plane passed through various owners including Kirk F. White and Cars of the Stars Museum until it was purchased by its present owner in 1978.
The entire vehicle is uncommonly original from the Miller-Schofield cylinder head, down to the unobtainable General Jumbo tires, three of which are inflated by the original General Jumbo inner tubes. A truly unique piece of automotive history.