"Where's my flying car?"

[classicdrogn]

Indeed, examples of that kind of roadable airplane have been around in various forms since the 1950s at the latest. The problem isn't building them, it's finding enough people with a pilot license and the money and a jurisdiction that will allow one to be certified as a street-legal vehicle as well as an aircraft, and who also don't mind the unavoidable compromises of combining machines with functions that only intersect in that they need a place for people to sit inside (generally even the engines are not well suited to be shared between road and air propulsion because the duty cycle required is so different) and whose performance both suffers with every ounce added that doesn't support their own specialized purpose, to at least make back the costs of building them.

Indeed, wikipedia lists quite a few of them, and the one I was specifically thinking of first flew in 1949. And then there's the Moller Volantor series... You'd think with how mainstream the use and general idea of quadcopter drones has become he'd be able to get some funding together to finally at least get a fully flying prototype made, but no.

We haven't even seen those Disney/Boeing X-Wing drones again after the one media event, as far as I can tell, and if anyone has money to throw at a tech project for pure looks and hype it's the Mouse. I mean, that's basically describing the entire EPCOT Center and most of the theme rides at Disney World parks in general to begin with.