I’m not really sure how far back it goes, but mankind have always wanted to fly.  That’s why people are into extreme activities like skydiving, paragliding, base jumping and all those activities that requires you to jump from a really high point.  And you can’t deny the fact that man has been coming up with ways to reach the stratosphere – the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere optimum for flying crafts.

I remember when I was a kid watching The Jetsons and seeing Marty McFLy’s flying DeLorean–I kept wondering when I would see a flying car in real life.  In the early days, people thought that by the year 2000, we’ll all be using flying cars, but it’s already 2012 and there’s still not a single flying car in sight.  Or is there?

Terrafugia Inc. already has a flying car called Transition, and they’re bringing it to the New York International Auto Show on April 6–April 15.

According to Terrafugia, the Transition is  “street legal airplane” or “roadable aircraft,” and is one of their several projects in the works but the most likely to be commercially reproduced.  It has foldable wings for land use.  It costs $279,000.

“We’ve had it at airshows before,” said Cliff Allen, the company’s vice president of sales, “but this is the first time we’re taking it to a large, general-interest audience.”

“This is the actual production prototype,” Allen added. “This is the product we’ll be taking to market.”

But did you know that the Transition is not the first flying car?  It’s actually the AVE Mizar – a Ford Pinto attached to a sawed up Cessna Skymaster airplane invented by Henry Smolinski.  Smolinski had a partner, Hal Blake and they founded the Advanced Vehicle Engineers in 1971 and their only product was the AVE Mizar.  Unfortunately, because of the design flaw, the two were left in mid-air riding a Pinto when the Cessna wings detached from the car.  The inventor and his partner were killed.