Flying car (fiction)

For other uses, see: Flying car. For real non-fictional flying cars, see: Flying car (aircraft)

In fiction, a flying car is a car that can be flown in much the same way as a car may be driven. In some cases such flying cars can also be driven on roads.

Flying cars usually appear in science fiction, but some fantasy films, such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, employ the same motif. In most cases the exact mechanism for achieving flight is never revealed.

In addition, flying cars have become a running joke; the question "Where is my flying car?" is emblematic of the supposed failure of modern technology to match futuristic visions that were promoted in earlier decades.

Science fiction

In science fiction, the vision of a flying car is usually a practical aircraft that the average person can fly directly from any point to another (e.g. from home to work or to the supermarket) without the requirement for roads, runways or other specially-prepared operating areas. In such works they can often start and land automatically in a garage or on a parking lot. In addition, the science-fiction version of the flying car typically resembles a conventional car with no visible means of propulsion, unlike that of an aeroplane.

A flying car is subtly different from a hovercar which flies at a constant altitude of a few meters above the ground.

In popular culture

Complaints of the non-existence of flying cars have become nearly idiomatic as expressions of disappointment in the failure of the present to measure up to the glory of past predictions.

The December 30, 1989 Calvin and Hobbes comic strip depicted an early instance of the "Where are the flying cars?" idea:

“

Hobbes: "A new decade is coming up." Calvin: "Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies? Where are the personal robots and the zero-gravity boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? HA! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays? Where are the floating cities?"

”

A memorable 2001 IBM television commercial featured Avery Brooks (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fame) complaining "It is the year 2000, but where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars. Why? Why? Why?"

Comedian Lewis Black had a similar routine early in the decade: "This new millennium sucks! It's exactly the same as the old millennium! You know why? No flying cars!"

In video games

"Chrono Trigger" (1995 SNES) Chrono and his friends use a flying car-plane time machine called the Epoch to travel the world and visit certain time periods created by the time portal gates.

"Bubsy 3D" (1996 Playstation 1) Bubsy the Bobcat rides in flying rocket cars in the later levels. Also in 3 intermission sequence. Bubsy and the alien are having a hovercar drag race event.

"Eyetoy: AntiGrav" (2004 Playstation 2) Flying cars are seen in 4 hoverboard racing courses.

Examples

• In "The Absent Minded Professor" and "Son of Flubber" Ned Brainard makes his Model T car fly using Flubber like substance.
• In "Pinocchio 3000" flying cars are used a lot for transportation in Scamboville.
• In "Treasure Planet" flying boats are used to get to the spaceport and for traveling in outer space.
• In "Meet the Robinsons" Wilbur takes Lewis in a flying car-plane time machine to visit the future with a lot of flying cars around the city.
• Flying cars were the most common mode of transportation in The Jetsons.

• One of the earliest stories to depict flying cars was Sultana's Dream, a feminist Bangla science fiction story written in 1905 by Begum Roquia Sakhawat Hussain.

• The 1974 James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun portrayed the villain escaping in a 1974 AMC Matador with a jet engine and wings mounted to the roof.

• In the Blade Runner movie, important people, police, and Harrison Ford's character use "Spinners", anti-gravity flying cars, to move in the futuristic cyberpunk Los Angeles of 2019.

• In The Fifth Element, flying cars are commonly used.

• In The Absent-Minded Professor, Professor Brainard (Fred MacMurray) uses flubber to make his Model T fly. In the remake Flubber, Robin Williams does the same to his red convertible.

• The Flying Car was a humorous short film written by Kevin Smith in 2002 for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

• Robert A. Heinlein's lost first novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs, featured egg-shaped 'flying cars' that had collapsible wings for fixed-wing flight as well as retractable helicopter-style rotors for take off.

• Robert A. Heinlein's 5th-to-last novel The Number of the Beast, published in 1980, features Gay Deceiver, a Ford flying car and continua craft.

• In That '70s Show, Red Forman has made a few remarks where he is disappointed that the present has yet to have a hovercar, which he was promised after World War II.

• In one of the animated short films from the fictional universe of The Matrix series, "The Second Renaissance" episode, intelligent machines are able to prosper due to the invention of whole new industries, such as the inception of the 'Versatron' flying car, which they sell to human markets. The anti-gravity engines that power these vehicles can later be seen on the exterior of ships like The Nebuchadnezzar or The Osiris, enabling them to fly.

• In the end of the 1985 film Back to the Future the film's main characters, Doctor Emmett Brown, Marty McFly, and Jennifer Jane Parker travel through time with the use of a DeLorean time machine, which Doc Brown had converted with the futuristic, hover conversion technology from the year 2015. However, this function is destroyed in the end of Back to the Future Part II (1989), when the DeLorean is struck by lightning.

• In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ron Weasley and his brothers use a flying car that belongs to their father to rescue Harry Potter from his aunt and uncle. Harry and Ron later use it again to return to Hogwarts when they are unable to board the school train (A house elf named Dobby sealed the secret barrier to the platform). The car is nearly destroyed when it crashes into a tree called the Whomping Willow, which proceeds to smash the car. The car then throws Harry and Ron out and drives into the forest. Later in the book, when they are being attacked by an acromantula named Aragog, Harry and Ron are surprised to see the car drive up and rescue them. It then proceeds to drive back into the forest.

• The Last Starfighter features what may be the earliest CG flying car, the Star Car.

• In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Billy builds the "RAD-Bug" (A Flying VW Beetle) to solve their transportation problems to the Command Center when they couldn't teleport.

• In the 1999 film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, when Austin was asked in the 60's what the future was like, he replies, "Everyone has a flying car, meals come entirely in pill form and the world is ruled by dang dirty apes."

• The Doctor used a flying car in the series Doctor Who during its 1974 season. Never truly given a name, it's affectionately known as the Whomobile.

See also

• Hovercar
• Flying car (aircraft)
• List of fictional vehicles - Flying cars and personal spacecraft

External links

• [1] Hoverboard and flying research website.
• Roadable Times - pictures and descriptions of over 70 designs of flying cars and roadable aircraft, past and present
• Waterman Aerobile at the Smithsonian
• Flying cars in 25 years (BBC News Online)
• How Flying Cars Will Work from HowStuffWorks
• Tales of Future Past
• X-Hawk from HowStuffWorks
• Future Flying Cars
• Wernicke Flying Car
• "Tailless Flivver Plane Has Pusher Propeller" Popular Science,May 1934, rare photos in article