Flying cars in sci-fi have been promised to us for more than sixty years, and fiction delivered them long before anyone else did, usually with better style. Flying cars are back in the news, so here is the definitive ranking: the Spinner from Blade Runner takes first place, the flying DeLorean from Back to the Future Part II comes second, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rounds out the podium. Below are ten ranked vehicles, a list of honorable mentions, and one famous car that never left the ground no matter how hard fans wish it had.
How I Ranked Them
I rank things. It is a character flaw I have decided to treat as a feature. Every entry among these flying cars in sci-fi was judged on three criteria: design (does it look like it could actually fly?), story impact (does the flying matter, or is it set dressing?) and craft (practical props and models score higher than pixels, because I have principles). Vehicles that are really spaceships were disqualified. A flying car has to be a car first.
The Top 10 Flying Cars in Sci-Fi
1. The Spinner, Blade Runner (1982)
Photo of a Spinner on display: Tydence Davis, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Spinner was conceived and designed by Syd Mead, the visual futurist who described it as an aerodyne: a vehicle that directs air downward to create lift. The film's press materials gave it three engines (conventional internal combustion, jet and anti-gravity), and in the story it belongs mostly to the police, who use it to patrol and watch the population. Wealthy citizens can get a spinner license, which is the most believable detail in the movie. The Spinner wins because it does not look like a toy. It looks like a working vehicle with a maintenance schedule and a dented fender. Its influence shows up in a lot of the sci-fi flying car designs that followed. The Tyrell Corporation designs in our Blade Runner t-shirts category are for people who still think about that rain-soaked skyline.
2. The Flying DeLorean, Back to the Future Part II (1989)
The first film ends with Doc Brown saying "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads," and the DeLorean lifting off. In Part II we learn why: in 2015 Doc gave the car a hover conversion, with the wheels folding flat underneath, and swapped the plutonium setup for a Mr. Fusion. Marty and Doc arrive on October 21, 2015, which means the future from Part II is now eleven years in our past. A lightning strike at the end of Part II knocks out the flying ability, and the car ends Part III flattened by a train. I consider time travel a lazy plot device, and I forgive this franchise completely because the car hovers. The hover-mode art on the shirt above is from our Back to the Future t-shirts category, which has a full garage of DeLorean designs.
3. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
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Photo: Martin Pettitt, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel, with a screenplay co-written by Roald Dahl and Dick Van Dyke in the lead, this is the one flying car with a hit song. Production designer Ken Adam designed the car, Rowland Emett created Caractacus Potts' wonderful inventions, and six cars were made for filming, only one of them fully functional. The hero car wore the registration GEN 11. When it matters, Chitty sprouts wings and propellers and simply takes off. The title song by the Sherman Brothers earned an Oscar nomination. It loses points only because the flying is magic, and magic is cheating.
4. Korben Dallas's Taxi, The Fifth Element (1997)
Luc Besson hired comic artists Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières to design his New York of the 2260s, and Mézières' comics already featured a character who drives a flying taxicab through congested air. That idea changed Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis, a former special forces major) from a factory worker into a cab driver. The result is the most crowded sky in cinema: lanes stacked dozens of levels deep, police chases between skyscrapers and a taxi that drops through traffic like a stone. Highest marks for world-building. The cab is also a working-class vehicle, which matters: most fictional flying cars belong to inventors, villains or the rich. Korben is just trying to make his shift.
5. George Jetson's Aerocar, The Jetsons (1962)
The Jetsons premiered on ABC on September 23, 1962, as the first program the network broadcast in color, and ran just 24 episodes before syndication revived it in 1985. George commutes from the Skypad Apartments in Orbit City in an aerocar with a transparent bubble top, and at the office it folds into a briefcase. He works for Spacely Space Sprockets, pushing a button for three hours, three days a week. As engineering, the briefcase fold is impossible. As a cultural image, it is the flying car most people picture first. The shirt above lives in The Jetsons t-shirts category.
6. The Flying Ford Anglia, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
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Photo: Rob Farrow, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Arthur Weasley's enchanted car flies Harry and Ron to Hogwarts after the platform barrier seals, then crashes into the Whomping Willow and goes feral in the Forbidden Forest. It returns later to rescue them from a nest of giant spiders. J.K. Rowling's novel came out in 1998 and the film in 2002. It is the only flying car on this list with a personality, and it holds a grudge. Our Harry Potter shirts lean toward houses and characters, but the Weasleys' car remains a favorite memory for a lot of readers.
7. The Flying Citroën DS, Fantômas se déchaîne (1965)
The deep cut. In the second of the French Fantômas comedies, the masked villain flees down an airport runway, extends retractable wings from his DS and takes off. France later honored the moment on postage stamps in 2021. Elegant, absurd and entirely European.
8. The Flying Model T, The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
Fred MacMurray's Professor Brainard, a character partly inspired by Princeton chemistry professor Hubert Alyea (nicknamed "Dr. Boom" for his explosive lectures), invents flubber, a substance that gains energy every time it hits a hard surface, and puts it in his Model T. The film earned three Oscar nominations, including one for special effects, and led to Son of Flubber (1963), Disney's first sequel. The 1997 remake exists. Reboots are usually inferior, and I stand by my canon.
9. The Flying Submarine Tank, The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)
Moe, Larry and Curly-Joe DeRita move in with Professor Danforth, who believes a Martian invasion is coming and needs help developing his invention, a flying submarine tank. Martian spies want it, a nuclear depth bomb gets mistaken for a carburetor, and some props were borrowed from Forbidden Planet. It is one of their weaker features and still a laugh, which is the Stooges' great talent. Our Three Stooges t-shirts category covers the knuckleheads in every era.
10. Scaramanga's Flying Car, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
The villain bolts wings onto a Matador coupe and flies away from James Bond. With the wings fitted, the full-size stunt car was 42 feet wide, and since it could not actually fly, the aerial shots used a remote-controlled model. That is honest practical effects work, so it makes the list. The same film also contains the famous corkscrew jump, a full 360 degree mid-air roll that was first tested as a computer simulation and was performed successfully on the first attempt. The flying car is sillier, but the craft around it was serious.
Honorable Mentions
- Supercar, Supercar (1961): Gerry Anderson's puppet series, before Thunderbirds, built around a jet-powered vertical takeoff car.
- The Terror, Master of the World (1904): Jules Verne gave engineer Robur a multi-terrain vehicle more than a century ago. Fiction really did get there first.
- Luke's landspeeder, Star Wars (1977): it hovers a few feet off the sand. Technically qualifies. Star Trek has shuttlecraft, which is all I will say.
- Hovercars, Futurama: everyone in New New York drives a hovercar, and the jokes about them are better than the traffic. See our Futurama t-shirts category.
- K's Spinner, Blade Runner 2049 (2017): the Spinner returns. A sequel that respects the original, which almost never happens.
- Ecto-1, Ghostbusters (1984): does not fly. People remember it flying anyway. It does not.
- KITT, Knight Rider: Turbo Boost is a jump, not a flight. Close, but no.
The Mach 5 Question
Photo: TaurusEmerald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Plenty of fans remember Speed Racer's Mach 5 sprouting wings. It did not. Designed by Tatsunoko art director Mitsuki Nakamura for the 1967 series, the Mach 5 had seven steering wheel buttons, A through G, and button A fired the auto jacks, which launched the car over obstacles. The wings belonged to the villains: the Car Acrobatic Team, a 16-driver gang (Snake Oiler drove car number 12) whose cars sprouted wings from both sides to jump gorges. The only Mach 5 that glides is the one from the 1997 Japanese remake, released in English as Speed Racer X, where an "aero jack" deploys wings after the jump. So the memory is real. It is just attached to the wrong car.
Why Flying Cars Make Great Shirts
A flying car is shorthand for a whole vision of the future, and people tend to have a favorite. Some grew up with the Jetsons on Saturday mornings. Some saw the Spinner rise out of the rain at a midnight screening. Wear a sci-fi flying car on your chest and you are inviting someone to tell you which future they were promised. In my experience, they always have an answer, and it is usually a good conversation. Browse more futures in our science fiction t-shirts category and our cartoons category.
The Sky Is Still Open
Real flying cars may or may not arrive on schedule. The fictional ones are already parked in our memories, and they are not going anywhere. Pick the one that made you look up, put it on a shirt, and see who waves back.