Few custom builds are as creative or out of this world, but still very practical as Speedycop’s cars. Speedycop, real name Jeff Bloch, has raced most of them in the 24 Hours of LeMons and attended a multitude of events, but not a single one matched SpeedyCopter in terms of wackiness and popularity.
A single look at it, and you know why: SpeedyCopter wasn’t a regular car. It was, in fact, an actual U.S. Army Vietnam assault aircraft that had been retired after many years in service, put on the chassis of an old Toyota van, powered by an Audi engine, and that could both race and float on water. Indeed, this former aircraft had been rendered perfectly road-legal and was amphibious, which made it the first vehicle ever to have traveled by air, on the road and by water.
SpeedyCopter was a one of a kind type of build and pushed the boundaries of what could be done so much that Speedycop and his team never tried to replicate it. Indeed, as awesome as it was, SpeedyCopter lived a very short life: a little over a year after it was made it mysteriously caught fire and burned down to the ground on the side of the highway, as it was making its way to a radio show in Philadelphia.
Like many other bright stars, though, SpeedyCopter lived a glorious, if short, life. Jeff Bloch bought the 1969 Bell OH-58 Kiowa helicopter in an online auction, paying some $3,100 for it. It was used in Vietnam and then by a drug task force back in the U.S., had washed away in a flood and was then sold for scrap. When it came into Bloch’s house in Southern Maryland, it had seen far better days.
Photo: Facebook / Speedycop
Bloch set out to restore it and, in the process, build an entirely new vehicle. He and his team also got a 1986 Toyota van chassis and worked from there. They added a widened Mazda Miata rear suspension, the mid / rear-mounted Audi 3.0 V6, and the possibility to move the original roof-mounted rotors with an Audi steering wheel (when not racing).
“The ‘86 Toyota van that provided the chassis actually just gave us the front suspension,” Bloch said in an interview in 2017, after SpeedyCopter’s demise. You can see it in full at the bottom of the page.
“We created a smooth hole underneath of that and filled the gaps with foam to provide flotation in the water,” the builder explains. “Then in the rear we put a 2002 Audi Quattro V6, that’s 220 horsepower with 30 valves. So one engine drove it both on land and in the water – it was a good feat of engineering but it was a lot of work.”
Photo: Facebook / Speedycop
SpeedyCopter’s amphibious capability was tested after it raced in the 24 Hours of LeMons at New Jersey Motorsports Park in May 2016, at the nearby Union Lake. It wasn’t the fastest thing on water, but being very light, it delivered excellently on the race track: 0 to 60 mph (96.5 kph) in eight seconds.
During its year-long life, SpeedyCopter won a bunch of awards but, most importantly, a place in the hearts of those who were lucky enough to come across it. As Bloch himself puts it, it’s not every day that you see a helicopter that is a street-legal car and that can also float, so everyone wanted to take pictures of the thing and find out more details about it.
Then, in September 2017, while on the way to Philadelphia for a radio interview, the driver saw fire coming from “the storage area in the tail where the Audi wiring harness was located.” He got out and took the fire extinguisher to put out the flames, but nothing happened. In a matter of minutes, SpeedyCopter had burned to the ground.
Photo: Facebook / Speedycop
It took Bloch and his team 3,000 man hours over the summer and an estimated $10,000 for this impressive build, and it was gone just like that. No one was hurt in the incident, except for SpeedyCopter, which burned beyond recognition. Bloch believes the fact that the military used magnesium in the build of the aircraft made the fire worse: when magnesium catches fire, it burns quickly and hotter and can’t be put out, he says.
His sole consolation is that he was the first builder to turn a helicopter in to a race car slash boat. “There’s never going to be another road-racing attack helicopter that’s fully amphibious as well – we’ve checked that off, it’s been done – it was a cool build and we’re very proud of it,” he says.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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