Author Andrew Glass first became intrigued by efforts to develop flying cars when he read a 2002 newspaper article about a 1949 Aerocar designed to drive into the sky. Clearly this prototype never achieved its inventor’s dreams for revolutionizing transportation, but what Glass learned was that this was hardly a singular attempt to create a drive/fly machine. In fact, he discovered that futuristic thinkers were envisioning such “hybrids” even before the Wright brothers’ first flight or Henry Ford’s mass-production Model Ts. The book Glass has produced on the subject chronicles more than a century of efforts, both in words and numerous photos, to turn the dream of flying cars into everyday reality.
Here’s an excerpt from Flying Cars:
“The1948 Cadillac was the first car to feature tail fins that resembled an airplane’s. By the late 1950s, most automobile designs looked like flying machines. [Inventor Daniel] Zuck believed the popularity of ‘airplanes without wings,’ as he called them, reflected a longing by motorists to convert grueling hours commuting on crowded highways to a daily adventure in the clouds. ‘The modern car,’ he wrote, ‘has slavishly imitated the airplane in almost everything except the wings. Why fly so low? Low flying is the most dangerous kind of flying. You already have an imitation airplane in your garage, so let’s put wings on it and make the modern automobile fully functional, take the car off the road and fly where the flying is safe in the wide blue yonder.’ Zuck advocated using existing roads as runways for landing and taking off. In dangerous flying weather, of course, a pilot could fold his wings and drive the roads instead.”
(Clarion Books, 118 pp.)
