Now new and guaranteed unusable!
Today, in the event of a flat tire, the question of jacking up is usually superfluous, as most cars are only equipped with a little sealant and a compressor instead of a full-size spare tire. Things were a little different at the beginning of the 1970s, when you had to crank yourself into a wolf on the hard shoulder with undersized scissor jacks to replace the damaged wheel with an intact one. In the search for a more comfortable alternative, many a wrong path was taken, as a visit to the "Automechanika" accessories fair in Frankfurt in 1972 showed.
There, the Swedish company EKA presented a jack that did not require any cumbersome mechanics: an air cushion about one square meter in size that was placed under the car and then inflated to 0.6 bar. The manufacturer promises a gentle application to the underbody and a lifting height of almost half a meter. In the photo, however, the thing looks a bit wobbly, according to which it could be unbalanced just by removing one wheel. The shunting frame underneath adds to the suspicion.
Of course, only very few people drove around with compressed air bottles or even cigar lighter compressors in the trunk 50 years ago. But EKA also had a solution for this: the oversized Raviolo is inflated with exhaust fumes from the exhaust pipe. Not a bad idea - but you shouldn't stand too close to it when you empty it out again after the work is done. You should also let the engine idle rather than blowing it up when stationary with no airstream.
The airy concept (at least as factory original equipment) has not yet caught on. The not exactly manageable weight of around twelve kilograms will have contributed to this. Of course, conventional accessories were also available in Frankfurt. For example, a set of "dung lamps", whose name was no indication of the product quality. In fact, nobody at the manufacturer's probably knew that condensing humidity has a different name here than in England.
