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From the very first days of the automobile, men began to wonder about merging the technologies of the auto with the capabilities of the aircraft. Here's a look back at the evolution of thought in that arena.
As a starting point, the definitive work on flying cars and roadable aircraft seemed to be a self-published 250-page book by Palmer C. Stiles, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana. With the title, From Wheels to Wings, the work followed a detailed history of the flying automobile revealed through a patent-by-patent search of the 76 patents registered between 1918 and 1993. To my amazement, I immediately discovered that the first attempts to merge the worlds of the automobile and the aircraft had come, not in the 1930s, but a mere 14 years after the pioneering milestones set by the Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk and by Henry Ford in Detroit. The race had started early, and was certainly far from being over, for it was obvious on even a superficial reading that 10 of the 76 patents in Stiles book were filed after 1989.

1917
The Glenn Curtiss Autoplane had its formal unveiling at the Pan-American Aeronautical Exposition held in New York City's Grand Central Palace in February of 1917. Billed at the time as an "aerial limousine," the strange little vehicle looked like the front half of a Model T Ford outfitted with Red Baron wings and pushed by a huge 9-foot four-blade pusher propeller mounted where the back seat should have been. The gigantic and clumsy triplane wings were fashioned into a single unit coupled with the empennage, and were meant to be removed as a single unit for road travel. This lone Autoplane, the one and only version ever made by Glenn Curtiss, was rushed to completion specifically for the New York exposition by using tri-wings identical to those on the Curtiss Model L triplane, as well as a standard Curtiss OXX 100 hp engine. The Autoplane skipped and jumped and hopped low off the ground a few times in 1917, but never actually took to the air. Still, the invention was sufficient to earn for Glenn Curtiss the unofficial title of the "Father of the Flying Car."

1934
Eugene Vidal (father of author Gore Vidal) was serving as chief of the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce, and he had the idea to sponsor a competition for aircraft designs to fill the need for a safe, low-cost means of air travel for everyman. Carrying the government designation, AB-205, the competition was quickly dubbed,

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