Top 10 Attempts to Build a Flying Car

Since Frank Curtiss patented a flying car in 1917, perhaps 100 different designs have been analyzed and widely discussed. Only about a dozen concept vehicles flew and drove on roads, and three designers died trying to prove their own concepts. Because of the incredible design, engineering, legal, and licensing challenges of building a flying car, just two designs have ever been certified by the CAA (now FAA) as aircraft?and the Taylor Aerocar of 1959 is the only one that was ever produced. Six Aerocars were built, sold, and flown.

When Taylor was developing the Aerocar more than a half-century ago, flying cars were a popular dream and famously graced the covers and pages of Popular Mechanics. When the interstate highway system was designed in 1956, planners thought flying cars would be part of our future, and runways next to freeways were part of some original proposals. Now, though, only some small ranch roads in the West and the Alcan Highway in Canada and Alaska have adjacent runways, but those are used for aircraft, not flying cars.

Today, the dream of a George Jetson personal flying machine seems like outdated mid-century futurism. But inventors continue to persevere. There is the clever Terrafugia, the crazy multiturbine Moller, and the hope that maybe, someday, we'll all have the flying cars we were promised. (No promises on jetpacks, though.) Here are some of the best attempts of the past and present to realize the dream.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/diy-flying/top-10-attempts-to-build-a-flying-car?src=rss

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