The Future is Now - How Soon The 1% Will Be Able to Fly Their Cars over Rush Hour Suckers

On MAD MEN Sunday Don Draper is flown up to a client meeting by Ted Chaough, his new business partner. Once they make it above the clouds, Ted asks Don how he's planning on wooing these clients and Don says "It doesn't matter what I say, you're the man who flew us up in your own plane." And it's true. If you've mastered the air, you're a true conqueror, a man who has at his own hands access to he endless highways in the sky.

Imagine if you could reduce your commute to a quick takeoff and landing followed by a 15-minute careen through the skies, above the traffic, above all those mere mortals shuffling at an ant's pace to work?

Already there are a few communities like this, where people commute to larger cities by airplanes they store in their own 1-jet garage. But the real dream is the flying car. Just like those bastards promised in BACK TO THE FUTURE II, by now we ought to have our own jet mobiles to pilot around town, go where we don't need roads and all that jazz.

And there have been a couple attempts. Just recently some weird Canuck contraption involving a rear-mounted fan and a parachute crashed near a Canadian elementary school. But for my money the future of the flying car rests in the Terrafugia TF-X. Still just a concept car, this rad vehicle will have the ability to take off vertically like a chopper or a VTOL plane as well as wings that fold out for flight and fold in for driving and parking. And best of all, it's electric so instead of polluting the environment with gasoline it merely uses coal-powered electricity like most of the grid. But hey, nobody's started pointing that out so far be it from me to start harping on it. This isn't about the environment, it's about flying cars. And goddamn will this one make a new jewel in the crown of whoever can afford the thing.

- Ryan