Flying Car: Difference between revisions

[[File:flying car.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|"''Roads? Where we're going we don't need -- roads.''"

 

So your hero needs a [[Cool Car]]. But what do you do when missiles, [[Nitro Boost]] and [[James Bond|ejector seats]] don't suffice to show just how much of a [[Badass]] he is? Simple: make it a flying car.

* Wallace's Air Car in ''[[Pokémon Special]]''. It can even be controlled remotely, a fact Ruby exploited twice during the final battles of the Ruby/Sapphire [[Story Arc]].

* There's lots of flying cars in ''[[Dragonball Z]]''.

* ''Bakusou Kyoudai Let's & Go!'' has Magnum mini 4WD series' "Magnum Tornado", the [[Nitro Boost]] making them able to fly and spin in the sky for a short time.

* ''[[Trinity Blood]]'' has an aerodynamics-challenged version.

 

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Chassis]]'' was a comic book series built around the sport of rocket car racing.

* The Whiz Wagon, used by Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion during Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" tenure at DC in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

== Fan Works ==

* The police car on Dandond in ''[[With Strings Attached]]''. George wants to take it home with him.

 

== Film ==

* Howard Stark presented a prototype in ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger]]''. It was still a couple years from being ready.

* The students of ''[[Sky High]]'' go to school in a flying bus.

 

== Literature ==

* The [[Insistent Terminology|volantors]] of Chasm City seen in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''Revelation Space'' series. Their most explicit appearance is in the novella ''Diamond Dogs''.

* Lowly Worm from the [[Richard Scarry]] books apparantly drives an apple-shaped car that also serves as a helicopter since its "leaves" actually function as the helicopter's blades. Except how the heck is he able to drive it if he doesn't have any arms?

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* The third Doctor in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' (while grounded on Earth by the Time Lords) briefly used a futuristic flying car dubbed by fans as "The Whomobile".

** More recently, the new series has "New Earth", which features flying cars. In its second appearance, the cars have the worst traffic jam in the history of the universe in "Gridlock".

 

== Music ==

* In [[Jaga Jazzist]]'s [[Animated Music Video]] for "Animal Chin", the band travels in two ordinary-looking cars, which bounce wildly on the ground before inexplicably taking to the skies.

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': In one Sunday comic, Calvin daydreams that his parents let him drive the family car. He then makes the car fly simply by driving so fast that the speedometer breaks.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Teenagers From Outer Space]]'' has spacesters: look like a car, move like a flying saucer. No teenager can afford to buy one—but a clever human/alien pair can ''build'' one by, yes, cannibalizing parts from a car and a flying saucer.

* ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' has "skimmers" - not quite free-flying antigrav vehicles. In the Imperium they are expensive and rarely seen outside Mechanicus and the elites of Hive Worlds. Armored ones are used as light attack craft. They are more common among the Tau and Eldar (Craftworld and Dark, anyway).

 

== Video Games ==

* Common in ''[[Mass Effect]]'', due to the ubiquity of Element Zero-based technology. In the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC for ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'', you even get to pilot one in a scene reminiscent of ''[[Attack of the Clones]]''.

* ''[[Space Taxi]]''.

{{quote|'''Luke''': "Professor, where did you learn to fly a plane?"

'''Layton''': "Plane? This is an automobile." }}

* Hover cars seem to the norm in [[Future Cop LAPD]], even if they still use roads.

* The ''[[Rogue Squadron]]'' games have a cheat-only flying Buick Electra convertible as an [[Easter Egg]].

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[Fenspace]]'' has flying cars that are spaceworthy. They still need fuel, though they don't seem to need oxidizers for the fuel.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has [[Artificial Gravity]] developed to the point that flying cars are common (and flight ''belts'', but those are less common). Of course, those are powered by annihilation plants (which is a ball of superstrong alloy loaded with neutronium and antimatter, that is distressingly close to armor piercing low-yield nuclear shell) and some of the implications are that on anything that easily counts as a shuttle "manual operation under influence" is commonly a capital offence - of course, it requires tampering with the hardware to remove overrides, and customer vehicles may not even ''have'' manual controls to begin with - [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-09-30 their autopilots are pretty good at avoiding damage].

 

== Western Animation ==

* Due to being tricked out by her twin super genius brothers, [[Kim Possible]]'s car has this capability.

* Goldie of ''[[Goldie Gold and Action Jack]]'' has a flying limo.

 

== Real Life ==

* As pointed out at the top of the page, flying cars ''have'' been invented in [[Real Life]]. The idea has just never managed to get off the ground [pun intended] because the flying cars used up ''way'' too much fuel while airborne. Also, they had a nasty tendency to crash when they ran out (which happened ''much'' more quickly than one might think.) Add expense, complexity of operation, and the relative practicality of an automobile as transportation... and you see the problem.

** The critical problem with 'flying cars' is that they are aircraft. As such you can't fly one without a pilot's license, and air traffic control would go insane trying to sort out millions of aircraft flying around each other in a small area. Most existing 'flying cars' are better described as roadable aircraft. Most small airfields are in rural areas, so you have the minor problem of arriving at an airfield and having no transport to the nearest town, except for a taxi or folding bicycle. The idea is that you could detach the wings and propeller, then drive the remaining vehicle by road into town. They are not really designed as a replacement for your normal car.

* [[Vaporware]] example: the [http://www.moller.com/ Moller Skycar].

** The Moller website does have some lovely quotes, though: