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While working on our upcoming cover story on “The Future” (more about that later today from Mangesh), I ran across the Transition, which was the closest thing I’d ever seen to a flying car. The closest, at least, until I found this on the Cellar:
It’s the Aerocar, the flying car of a future long since past. The Cellar says: “There were only six of these ever built, and at a rather slow rate. The one shown here was finished in 1960, the fourth one. It turns out that, according to Wikipedia entry on the car, the third one was once ridden by that Raul Castro – Fidel’s brother, and the guy currently running Cuba. Unfortunately for Raul, it ran out of fuel and crashed. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it only damaged the vehicle and not Castro himself.”
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Flying cars may soon leap from the world of science fiction into reality. Terrafugia today said it had successfully flown its Transition Roadable Aircraft that can transform itself from car to plane version in less than 30 seconds.There have been successes that never began mass production, and miserable failures including a flying car that used the Ford Pinto. (That should have been the first clue it was headed for disaster.) Well, there is now a company called Terrafugia, and they have a roadable aircraft (that’s the term) called the Transition. The Transition has folding wings, and can reach over 100 mph in the air, 60 mph on the ground, runs on gasoline and has a range of about 400 miles. You’ll need some hefty personal loans for one however, as this flying car has a sticker price of about $200,000.
posted by Flying Car on 3-27-2009 at 6:48 am