Uhh, suck it George Jetson, we comin' fo' yo' spot, BEE-OTCH!! Yeah, so some Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained engineers are actually making a go of building a profitable business selling, wait for it...FLYING MUTHERF@$%!&# CARS!! Now anybody that knows me knows that since Y2K I've been eagerly anticipating this news. And today, friends i can finally exhale.
Ladies and gentlemen if you will, the Terrafugia Transition seats two and can take off and land from more than, wait for it...5,000 public U.S. airfields, BOOM!! In addition to being an awesome aeronautical specimen it can also be driven on any road and runs on the same gasoline as high-performance cars. Citizens in the know, mostly ballers & aviators have already put at least $10,000 down to reserve one of these bad boy's when they drop.
Right now the depositors don't really care if the thing works or not, like myself the Terrafugia is about fulfillment of a childhood prophecy delivered by science fiction authors & Hanna Barbera, respectively. Even Carl Dietrich, the prototype's founder & chief executive officer, has admitted he's been dreaming of drive piloting one of these babies since watching re-runs of The Jetsons.
A dreamer, aeronautical engineer and pilot he maybe but Dietrich is also practical. He didn't even decide to make a move until 2004 when the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) lowered the barrier for getting a pilot's license, creating a new lane for aircraft design. This new development gave Dietrich the foresight to see the opportunity for a new business venture in the aviation world.
"The sense I've gotten in having conversations is, 'The flying car is something I was promised a long time ago and I want it,' " Dietrich said. Customers "don't care about practical arguments. They need to have it as part of a collection. Our long-run goal is to make this not just a novelty, but something really practical."
The Transition will appear on display at the New York auto show this month with a special offer to reserve one for a $2,500 non-refundable deposit. Cop that.
One of the things standing in the way of the Transition finding its way into every driveway & airplane hangar in America is the fact that none of its descendants have ever been commercial successes at becoming the "everyman's " choice of airplane/car hybrid. Dom Pisano, the curator in the aeronautics division at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum says, "Practicality is the huge reason".
"The aerodynamics for automobiles are very different than for airplanes and we've ended up with halfway measures in both categories, and that's a big part of the reason they've failed."
The museum's collection includes three previous notable although epic fails: a Stout Skycar from the 1930s, a Fulton Airphibian from the 1940s and a Waterman Aerobile from the 1950s.
"The idea has had a long history, but not one of ultimate long-term success," Pisano said.
In the 1930s, inventor Harold Pitcairn developed an AC-35 Autogiro and actually sold 19 of them. It was more aircraft than car, however said John Brown, which is why we haven't seen any on the road. That and because it was the 1930s. Brown also runs a website devoted to flying vehicles called RoadableTimes.com and is publishing a book later this year called "All the World's Flying Cars" about the history of well, flying cars.
Brown also told of a Connecticut man in the 1940s named Robert Fulton created the Airphibian and finished eight of them with several more partially built before arguments among his investors (haters) scuttled the project.
He also informed that General Dynamics Corp. was planning production of 160,000 flying cars called Convair (Conair?) until a crash during a 1947 test flight scared the wind resistance out of the public and dissuaded many would-be inventors for decades (that's what happens when you get Nicholas Cage to test drive your sh!t).
Better engineering, lighter materials and engines with more powerful thrust-to-weight ratios are all factors in giving these potentially magnificent death machines any street cred today. Brown says there are about 35 new models in existence today waiting, just waiting. And that doesn't even include other dream machines such as flying bicycles (i know, right), fueled parachutes and gyroscope or helicopter models.
"We've sent man to the moon, kids in school can Skype from Europe to the U.S. and we can cure most diseases," Brown said. "Putting wheels on a light airplane isn't that hard, you would think, but it's actually very hard."
Props to Mark Clothier and Mary Jane Credeur who are Bloomberg writers. mclothier@bloomberg.net, mcredeur@bloomberg.net
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