After 100 Years, Goodyear Ditches Blimps For Zeppelins

After building blimps for almost 100 years, Goodyear’s teaming up with Ze Germans and canning their three blips for a fleet of Teutonic zeppelins set to go into operation in 2013. The zeppelins will be longer, fly faster, and hold more people. None of which will help make it anything but a more novel way of providing a stadium shot before football and baseball telecasts go to commercial.

There’s something a little bothersome about switching over control of our painfully slow sky-based technology to a company named ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, successor to the company behind the original Zeppelin airships/warships. Or maybe my xenophobia is masking my displeasure with Goodyear stealing my blimp.

See, back when I was just a school boy I’d marvel on many days at the Goodyear Blimp flying over my house. Back then the now Florida-based Goodyear Blimp (via Akron) was based in Spring, Texas, just a short distance from my house.

We had a blimp hanger and, driving down Interstate 45, I’d often see the Goodyear Blimp “America” landing and taking off. At school we’d stare skyward, mouths agape, as the mighty silver missile transit un-missilelike across the atmosphere.

And then it was gone. Before I even had a chance to ride in it.

After Goodyear stole our blimp the large Goodyear hanger was used by Genesis to rehearse for their 1992 tour. Understandably, it was demolished shortly after that out of what I can only imagine was an overwhelming sense of shame.

We don’t have an image of what the new blimp will look like, but perhaps it’ll look like the image to the right.

(Hat tip to TheTick247)

Photo credit: Larry Reese/Chronicle, FX, AP Photo/Jeff Glidde

Republished from Jalopnik