Cool cars are invented!!!

Dude, Where's My Jetpack?
2.26.2007
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/feb/jetpack-future-technologies

Flying Car
Look at your car sitting there in the driveway—sad, squat, all four tires on the pavement. You should feel sorry for your car for the same reason that you should feel sorry for yourself: You are both flightless. Optimistic drivers of the past imagined a future in which the stubby tail fins of their cars morphed into broad wings. According to the car companies presenting at the World's Fair of 1939, your driveway was destined to become a runway, the highway a skyway, and the only speed limit the speed of sound.
The first attempts at creating flying cars were fairly simple—install an airplane engine and two wings on a regular car. The first attempts were also disastrous. Henry Ford's "sky flivver" flew in 1928, but production was nixed after an unlucky pilot died in a crash. In 1956, Moulton Taylor, an engineer who earlier had helped develop the cruise missile, unveiled the Aerocar. The little yellow Aerocar could leap from the highway at 55 miles per hour and cruise up to 100 mph at around 12,000 feet with a range of up to 300 miles. The Aerocar worked fine conceptually, but it was too impractical for everyday use—a business deal for full-scale production fell through in the early 1970s. The only remaining Aerocar prototype was purchased by a fan who saw it advertised in the classifieds.
If you are averse to purchasing dangerous relics listed in obscure newspaper ads and you still want to acquire a flying car, the solution may be to let NASA take care of it. That's right, NASA gave us gooey foam pillows, dehydrated ice cream, and those shiny space blankets, and it may yet fork over the flying car. NASA scientists working on the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) project are making inroads on the two main problems holding back personal air travel on a massive, nationwide scale: midair collisions and complicated piloting mechanisms.
The Moller M400 Skycar launches like a helicopter, flies like an airplane, and drives like a car; unfortunately, you still can't buy one.
NASA eschews the term "flying car," preferring "personal air vehicle" instead. Nevertheless, NASA has imagined flying cars that would humiliate George Jetson. Until their vehicle program was eliminated in 2005, the folks at Langley Research Center planned to roll out three prototypes in sequence: a small prop plane that would tuck its wings in on the highway (it shouldn't cost any more than a Mercedes-Benz); a two-seater with rear-propeller drive; and, for tight parking spots, one capable of vertical takeoff. Merely providing the vehicles would not be enough, however. If everyday people are to use them, scientists must know how to track thousands of these car-planes. And knowing is half the battle.
Collision-deterring navigation systems are key to transforming highways into skyways. Personal air vehicles will use GPS and cell phone technology to automatically broadcast information about location and speed to ground-based towers. From the ground, an automated computer system will update the flight path of every sky vehicle and provide instant directions—automatically avoiding collisions and minimizing flight time. Meanwhile, onboard sensors will detect nearby trees, buildings, and power lines. And the jackpot bonus item for the sky-car consumer: For most of the flight the human "driver" can take care of anything besides flying, like eating a whole bag of potato chips.
NASA's dream cars may be exciting (and legitimate), but they aren't available to the public right this second. So turn your attention to the Moller M400 Skycar—a partially tested prototype offered in the 2005 Neiman Marcus gift catalog. Paul Moller, a former engineering professor at the University of California at Davis, has spent all of his money and more than 40 years trying to build a flying car. The current model is a cherry-red coupe that looks as though it should be dogfighting TIE fighters outside the Death Star. The futuristic Skycar has four seats (carrying up to 750 pounds), a maximum airspeed of 375 mph, and a range of about 750 miles. On the ground, the Skycar should travel a dinky 30 to 35 mph, just fast enough to get to an empty parking lot and stun everyone with a sweet vertical takeoff. Prototypes like the Skycar have been on the verge of full-scale production for almost a century, though, and it may be another hundred years before you can score that most badass symbol of the space age, the flying car.