Flying cars in movies and TV and the real-life vehicles they inspired

Ancient stories and depictions of gods in ancient Mesopotamia or Greece frequently had them flying around in chariots.

In the 16th-century text “The Man in the Moone,” Francis Goodwin imagined that humans might journey to the moon on a chariot pulled by geese.

The New York Times article was titled “Maxim’s Flying Car,” referring to Hiram Stevens Maxim, the inventor behind the first machine gun. In this instance, the term “car” most likely referenced a carriage. 

According to the article, Maxim and his team flew 500 feet at a rate of “something like 45 miles per hour.” The description of the machine is what separates it from an actual car; it was “100 feet wide with four side sails and, when seen in the air, will give the impression of an enormous bird.” 

More closely resembling an early attempt at a plane than an actual flying car, the headline pointed to the mythology of the flying car. 

The automobile as we know it had just been invented in 1908, and the Wright brothers had made their first successful flight not too long before that, in 1903. Glenn Curtiss, the man behind the V8 engine and a major contributor to aeronautic engineering, figured: Why not put the two together? 

In 1917, in front of a crowd at the Pan American Aeronautical Exposition of 1917, Curtiss attempted to take off in his flying car, according to a NASA paper on flying cars. The car performed more of a hop than it did take flight, and with no financial backers for the project, Curtiss never pursued the idea further. 

“Just Imagine” has scenes with people flying around in machines that look more like planes than cars but can perform vertical take-offs and landings. In the movie, the aircraft moves through the air in straight lines, like cars in the sky. 

The film takes place in a futuristic society where food has become pills, names have become numbers, and the government decides who people can or cannot marry. The technologically-advanced vision in “Just Imagine” took place in 1980, which might explain why flying car depictions and attempts started becoming more prolific. 

The idea behind the vehicle seems a little absurd, especially since it looks more like a futuristic helicopter than it resembles a car. 

The Aska A5 flying car prototype has rotary blades that fold in and out from the top, can fly 250 miles, and is an electric vehicle. According to Military and Aerospace Electronics, the car has also earned FAA airworthiness certification to begin testing phases. 

Looking at H.G. Wells’ idea of a flying car and what we have started to achieve, it appears that Wells wasn’t too far off base.

The 60s saw a boom of flying cars in pop culture, starting with Disney’s “The Absent-Minded Professor.”

“The Absent-Minded Professor” was a departure from the science fiction movies of the early 20th century in its fantastical, rather than practical, approach to the flying car. 

The flying car in “The Absent-Minded Professor” is achieved through an anti-gravity substance called flubber, created by the professor himself, which allows the car to fly without any changes to the frame or additions of rotors or wings. 

“The Jetsons” premiered in September 1962 and only lasted one season (though it would return for two additional seasons in the 1980s), but its impact persists today. The cartoon depicted an idealized version of the future that was “a distillation of every Space Age promise Americans could muster,” according to Smithsonian Magazine.

The previous Convair Model 116 managed 66 successful flight tests, according to Complex. They improved the design for the Model 118, but it only had one test flight. 

The test flight lasted an hour, but had to make an emergency landing because of low fuel. The pilot had to make an emergency landing that destroyed the car, damaged the wings, and injured the pilot, according to Popular Mechanics. 

In 1971, Henry Smolinski and Harold Blake died when their flying car prototype crashed and exploded.

The two engineers from California were taking their car on a test flight when black smoke began emanating from it. The car crashed, and the two died as a result.

1982’s “Blade Runner,” takes place in Los Angeles in 2019. In this universe, flying cars are as abundant as normal cars. 

In reality, flying cars didn’t make it to the skies of Los Angeles in 2019. The movie “Just Imagine” believed we’d soar around in our flying cars or personal planes by the 1980s. Though there were multiple attempts to make it happen, none ended up taking off.

In an interview with The New York Times, John Brown, the chief editor of Roadable Times, said through all the different iterations of flying cars, “none have been practical.” 

“Cars have an aerodynamic that makes them hug the ground, whereas an aircraft is designed to do just the opposite,” Brown told The Times, “and cars need even weight distribution on all four wheels, while an aircraft has 90 percent of its weight on the back wheels.”

In addition to that, it’s hard to figure out insurance and licensing around flying cars. Some of them require pilot licenses, like Klein Visions Air car, and others only require a driver’s license. 

The Pal-V, a flying car from the Netherlands, requires a pilot’s license to operate and has components that fold in or pop up to make it flight-ready in 10 minutes.  

The car-helicopter hybrid will cost $400,000, according to the BBC. 

The Alef Model A will cost $300,000, but the company hopes to bring the cost-per-vehicle down to $35,000 by 2035, Insider reported.

The design of the car is a departure from traditional models of flying cars, but Alef cites “Back to the Future” as the inspiration behind the design of the car.