Depends on one’s definition of flying car. If it’s the sci-fi/Hollywood idea of wings and a jet engine popping out of a Camry and then doing a vertical takeoff out of highway traffic? Probably not in the lifetime of any currently living person, if at all.

There aren’t any flying cars, and there aren’t any on the horizon

Dear lord, just look at that packaging!

They put one in the Atlantic concept car. Guess that’s no help, though.

*Laughs in Italian*

There’s an even closer analogue, taken directly from Bugatti: The Type 251 GP car of the early 1950s. It was a transversely-mounted mid-engined inline-8 with center power takeoff. Bugatti was a shell of its former self by then and the money ran out.

I do have a thing for straight 8s! Their popularity certainly peaked in the 20s and 30s but they were available into the early 50s, as pre-war designs got updated while newer pushrod V8s got developed. Overtorquing the crank was becoming an issue even at 50s power levels, though as others have noted, the mid-crank…

See also: The Cizeta-Moroder V16T. (Yes, that Moroder).

Unrelated, but related, I read once that nitromethane drag cars have the camshafts ground deliberately slightly out of phase front-to-rear, because at that kind of power outputs and the grip of the immense tires, they are factoring in a certain amount of twist in the crankshaft, in order to keep the valve timing close…

Same thing happened to me last time I was at a dealer looking for a car I could daily. I told the salesman I wanted the car in a manual.  He looked at me like I had three heads and asked me why I would want that.

I drove manuals in hours long traffic on the 405 in LA. It’s shitty, but it’s shitty in anything. It wasn’t enough to make me want to quit the clutch.

This is a good take.

It’s exactly where it is on the four door one! Well, I mean the normal four-door Bronco. I was trying to see if a 2-door pickup could just use that unchanged four-door platform.

That’s where the wheel is on the 4-door chassis. It just looks bizarre without the rear doors. 

Are you purposely putting the rear wheel in the wrong place to screw with my head??

People would wreck them instantly. Unless someone is trained to handle that kind of power no way should they get released to the public. This is sort of what happened when the original Viper was released: tons of people with no experience with that power wrecked them almost as soon as they left the dealer lot.

That’s no $225k shifter. THIS is a $225k shifter

Major premise: Flying is harder than driving.

James May did a segment on the Taylor Aerocar. He actually flew in it.