After returning to the US he launched a career in advertising in Davenport, Iowa, and purchased a Curtiss JN-4, which he learned to fly.
To further the idea, Luscombe talked several business associates into joining with him to form the Central States Aero Company, Inc.
They hired Clayton Folkerts, a young Iowa farmer, to design and build the aircraft, which they called Monocoupe.
The first example emerged in 1927—a cheap, light, quick, efficient, comfortable two-seater—and was the beginning of a radical change in personal aviation in the United States, the small, enclosed-cockpit "personal" light plane, well-suited for comfortable cross-country travel.
In 1933 he left the Monocoupe business (owned by Lambert Aircraft Corporation at the time) and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to found another company, the Luscombe Airplane Development Corporation, building all-metal monocoque fuselage aircraft.