A vehicle soaring into the azure sky, which just minutes earlier was wheeling along the roads… To some, it seems like a crazy dream of science-fiction writers and screenwriters’ daydreams. Nevertheless, flying cars are real and they exist literally for centuries. Recently, the AirCar made a half-hour flight between the Slovak cities of Nitra and Bratislava. By the end of this decade, Hyundai plans to flood the world with similar technology. Surprised? But of course not… In our article you will find a lot of revelations and wonderful discoveries!

The first attempt to cross a land vehicle with a heavenly one dates back to the mid-19th century. In the minds of British engineers William Samuel and John Stringfellow was born the image of a steam engine Ariel with a capacity of up to 12 people, strapped to a 46-meter wing. It was supposed to be able to reach up to 80 km/h in the air and have a range of 1600 km. Alas, it did not go beyond pictures – the then level of technology did not allow to realize the idea.

The next attempt – it should be noted, quite progressive and in a certain sense prophetic – was the Autoplane of the famous American aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss. The car was a combination of an aluminum body with a 100-horsepower engine and three wings from the Curtiss Model L training plane. According to Curtiss’s idea, the aviation attributes were removed for road travel and put just before the flight. The Autoplane was introduced in 1917 at the Pan-American Air Show in New York, but it was not destined to show itself in action.

A combat-ready airplane appeared before World War II. The Waterman Arrowbile by American inventor Waldo Waterman was a tiny aluminum-steel cab with a 100-120 hp Studebaker engine and a removable 11.58-meter wing. On public roads, the Arrowbile could reach up to 113 km/h, and in the sky, up to 190 km/h (cruising speed was 164 km/h) and cover 560 km on a single tank. Finally, most importantly – it really flew! Unfortunately, the interesting car did not become a serial production.

After the war, all the same Americans corrected the concept of an aerial vehicle. This time the interpretation was very unambiguous. The Consolidated Vultee company, later renamed Convair, introduced the ConvAirCar Model 116. Attached to the body of the car with a 26-horsepower engine was a monoplane with its 90-horsepower opposition engine. The later prototype Model 118 had 190 horsepower. The machine could take off, demonstrated its capabilities, and was even planned for mass production. But on November 18, 1947, during the demonstration flight, an accident occurred. Due to a malfunction in the fuel gauge, the machine “dried up” in the sky and the pilot had to make a hard landing. Apparently, this incident frightened the developers and they closed the program.

The ConvAirCar Model 116/118 project was not the only one of its kind in the forties. Interestingly, other conquerors of the earth and air elements were markedly different from it. Consider the Fulton FA-2 Airphibian. It would seem that it does not contain the smell of a car! In fact, it masterfully disguises itself in the outline of an airplane by engineer Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. The front end with small wheels is able to drive on the road, and when necessary, it straps on the rear section with a wing and – hello, sky. With a 165 hp six-cylinder engine, the Fulton FA-2 Airphibian could reach 190 km/h, have a practical ceiling of 3,700 meters and a range of 560 meters.

The 1949 Aerocar, like the aforementioned engineering marvels, also did not progress beyond the prototype stage. Engineer Moulton Taylor’s interesting-looking machine was a two-seat car with a 143-horsepower four-engine, to which the wings and tail section were attached. The Aerocar could reach up to 188 km/h in the sky, reach an altitude of 3.7 km, and travel 480 km on one tank. It is interesting that this particular Aerocar was the prototype of the Franz Flieggangausen character from the Disney cartoon “Planes”. Taylor built six prototypes. One of them externally resembled a cartoon Jaguar E-Type.

In the early seventies, the creators of flying cars saw with their own eyes how risky it could be a creative promising venture. The reason for that was a terrible accident with the Mizar project from AVE (Advanced Vehicle Engineers) company of California. The design looked not only doubtful, but rather frightening. A banal hatchback Ford Pinto tried to get along with the 210 hp six-cylinder engine and components of the Cessna Skymaster. It didn’t work out so well.

Mistress, then I often think with longing, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite but it is too much for my strength sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet.