The Skycar's outrageously sexy appearance is hard to reconcile with its creator. Moller doesn't look or act like someone who would build the stuff of male adolescent fantasies. There's something sturdy and utilitarian about his build and even his face, though the latter is softened by an extended Vandyke that gives him an incongruously thoughtful look. In fact, Moller shrugs off his supervehicle's hot looks as an incidental by-product of the physics of airflow. "If you design something well aerodynamically, it will probably look good, too," he explains.
Appearances aside, the Skycar is an undeniably innovative machine. It seats four in its bubbled cockpit, can be driven for short runs on its three small wheels (by virtue of which the M400 is categorized as a motorcycle by the Department of Transportation), and fits in a two-car garage. Moller claims that the Skycar will in a decade or so be quiet enough to take off from a suburban driveway without unduly stressing the neighbors, but in the shorter term he envisions that owners will drive it to a local "vertiport" for a launch.
Once the completed Skycar lifts straight up to a safe height, the machine will thrust forward to speeds of 300 miles per hour or more, under the control of 28 microprocessors running 27,000 lines of programming code that control devices such as those that readjust the flow of fuel to each of the eight engines every hundredth of a second to balance and steer the vehicle. The computers get their marching orders from the pilot by means of a pair of joysticks, but they won't wait for the pilot's slow reflexes to kick in before taking any necessary corrective action. "In a 300-mph vehicle, you're the weak link," says Moller.
Anyone who visits Moller International with the idea that the Skycar was born in a slick, futuristic working environment will be disappointed. The facilities look a lot like the branch offices of a struggling insurance company backed up against a large auto-body shop specializing in interplanetary vehicles. The main giveaway that some kind of advanced high-tech wizardry is happening there is the 21-inch computer-aided- design display terminals tucked away in one set of cubicles. But you'd also have to wonder about the shrapnel holes decorating one small room off the main workshop floor. (They were created by an experimental engine that almost ripped itself apart during a bench-test explosion.)
There are 25 employees at the company, and given the current shortage of skilled workers who are willing to work for down-to-earth salaries, Moller was happy to grab them any way he could. One electronics expert had dropped by to inquire about renting storage space when he was thrust into an interview and summarily hired; a mechanical engineer was recruited by another employee who happened to be standing around when the engineer was in a local U-Haul office returning a moving truck.
Moller has at times been way ahead of other U.S. businesses when it comes to finding innovative ways to compensate employees, though he claims that he usually ends up regretting it. In the early 1970s, for example, he issued phantom stock -- that is, he contracted to pay employees bonuses that corresponded to increases in the value of the company's stock. He ended up paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Supertrapp employees under the plan, he says, before the company was sold. In the late 1980s he started issuing employee stock options with no strings attached, but after a key worker quickly cashed out and started his own business, Moller instituted an eight-year vesting schedule.
Turnover has been a problem, Moller concedes. The main reason: fears about the company's financial health. He recently lost his general manager to a dot-com. "He's getting $3 million or $4 million in options there," says Moller, "and here he had to worry about his next paycheck." He means that literally -- several times over the years the company delayed issuing paychecks because the money simply wasn't in the bank.
Moving ahead to the Skycar project had only increased the pressure to raise money, because of the vehicle's added complexity and the need to make it a practical, certifiable aircraft. (Just building a one-twelfth scale model of the Skycar for dog-and-pony shows cost $20,000.) Before beginning work on the Skycar, Moller had tried to broaden his fund-raising efforts. "We've explored every option known to man," he says. He contacted most major automakers about buying into his company, but they told him point-blank they had no interest whatsoever in flying vehicles. He tried aircraft manufacturers, which for the most part insisted they had enough problems getting ordinary planes and helicopters right. He made his way through much of the Fortune 500 without encountering a glimmer of interest. The only investment bank willing to get involved was Robertson Stephens, which put together a $1.5-million private placement marketed to a handpicked list of its clients. Robertson even had Moller present at a technology conference it sponsored for investors. Not a single nibble. Moller looked into an initial public offering but couldn't find an interested high-quality underwriter.
He trolled for investors through a full-page ad in Business Week. It drew a number of candidates, including a significant one: Jack Allison, an air-force colonel turned real estate agent who was also an enthusiastic pilot. After meeting with Moller, Allison gathered together 21 pilots, colleagues, friends, and friends of friends to come up with $150,000 in 1986. Allison was such a gung-ho supporter of Moller's efforts that Moller later invited him to join the company. Allison's title is vice-president of administration, but he serves more as an investor-relations specialist, especially when it comes to selling fellow aviation fanatics on the company.
