Passengers travelling aboard the subject of this year’s Christmas road test don’t get airsick but can feel seasick, according to Kate Board, one of its lead pilots.
With distinctive blue-and-yellow livery, this Zeppelin LZ N07-101 airship is otherwise known as The Goodyear Blimp, a marketing vehicle that returned to European skies for the first time in almost a decade during the summer.
That people on board are likely to need sea legs rather than air legs tells you something about the unique nature of an airship, as we’ll discover. They’re sometimes referred to as lighter-than-air ships, although that’s not strictly accurate in the case of the latest Zeppelin craft, made by Zeppelin NT (for New Technology).
The German company’s current genesis came about after a long period of dormancy for the famous old name. The original Zeppelin made and operated huge airships, with its Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin offering transatlantic passenger crossings in as little as two and a half days, making them the fastest way across in the late 1930s. “They were the private jet aviation of the day,” Zeppelin CEO Eckhard Breuer tells us today.
Zeppelin even had a venture with Goodyear, and demand for airships was so great that Zeppelin wanted to buy helium gas from the US, but it needed its precious supplies for itself. Fatefully, Zeppelin instead floated the Hindenburg with hydrogen; its fiery 1937 crash was the world’s first televised industrial disaster and the primary reason why airships went out of fashion overnight.
The later invention of the jet engine sealed the airship’s fate, but Zeppelin as an entity continued, owning the likes of Europe’s largest Caterpillar dealer and car component supplier ZF, with a trust fund set aside for the rebirth of airships in the future.
That came to be in 1997, when a new Zeppelin airship prototype first flew. Refined and honed since, the Zeppelin’s attributes today make it much more than just a marketing tool and a floating beacon of joy.
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Love your Christmas tests - perfect blend of fun, frivolity, and interest. How many of these have you done - enough for a book? I would certainly buy a large format coffee table book of Autocar Christmas road tests. Almost an almanac of interesting vehicles / transport over the years, with some of the best popular culture writing and photography going.
So you finally found something that really drifts...
Love it when you guys write off piste!