The end to road rage, Panda Express and middle seats

”I’m always a hopeful kind of guy,” says Bothwell, who has been in regular contact with Yoeli’s design team for the past two years. ”By 2010, I can see us having five or six X-Hawks in our fleet.” But by then, Yoeli reckons, you may already have one in yours.

—From “Going Way Off Road,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 26, 2004

Six MIT studs are making more than just themselves look smart. Six years ago, I wrote a story for the New York Times Magazine about the race to create the first road-worthy, flight-approved, buy-one-yourself, flying car. A handful of independent dreamers were cranking away on their own designs, each aiming to come up with a vehicle that was small enough to park in your garage, speedy and stylish to drive on the highway, yet aerodynamically engineered to unfold its wings at the push of a dashboard button and take flight. It was a vision almost too delicious to entertain. Instead of fuming in traffic and fidgeting in check-in lines, you could just zip along to your tiny nearby airfield, pop a button on the dashboard, and settle back as your car transformed into a Jetson-jet.

So when would this dream come true?

The prediction: 2010.

The reality: 2010

The Terrafugia Flying Car