Both have drawbacks that have prevented much progress over the years. The two approaches ad – dress the same design goal from different directions: A modular craft is primarily an automobile with wings and tail attached an integrated type is an airplane that has been made road-worthy. The promise of designing and flying “integrated” or “modular” craft by combining the capabilities of airplanes and automobiles has intrigued inventors ever since. Longobardi’s invention never actually got beyond the sketch phase, but his patent was the first of many to follow for imaginative combined vehicles. Drawings of this multipurpose machine show it was intended as a roadable, flyable gunboat, with re tractable wings and an engine in the rear for flight, propellers underneath for operation in water and four wheels for land use. In December 1918, Felix Longobardi received the first U.S. But the designer soon lost interest in the project and abandoned it. Curtiss, who fell out with the Wrights over patent claims, eventually received a patent in 1919 for his Autoplane, and it made at least one brief flight of a few feet. Featuring an aluminum fuselage with three wings and twin-boom tail, it was powered by a 100-hp engine connected to a four-blade prop by a shaft and belts. He built a three-seat, four-wheel Autoplane that he referred to as an “aerial limousine” in time to display it at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition of 1917 in New York City. Vuia apparently made several successful flights after that, but gave up on his invention after a 1907 crash.Īnother, better-known inventor interested in combining an automobile and aircraft was American aircraft designer and pilot Glenn Curtiss. Some Eastern European historians in fact regard him as the third person to fly after the Wrights. According to some accounts, Vuia managed to get his carriage off the ground-all of 3 feet-that day for a few brief moments. Designed by Romanian Trajan Vuia, who dubbed it an Aerial Carriage, the miniature tractor monoplane resembled a four-wheeled bicycle with birdlike wings.

Less than 10 years after Henry Ford built his first automobile and three years after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight, a primitive flying car reportedly took to the air in Paris on March 18, 1906. It’s an idea that’s been around for more than a century. What road- weary commuter has not dreamed of being able to simply fly over gridlocked traffic to get to an important meeting or be home in time for dinner? To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott’s famous lines, “Breathes there a motorist with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, ‘I wish I could overfly this traffic ahead?’” Others have longed for the convenience of a roadable aircraft, one that combines the practicality of a car with the speed and efficiency of an airplane or helicopter. Traffic is one of the banes of modern existence. Although many designers have tried to build a practical flying car, the idea never took off.

The road not taken