Forget practising your hill start in this lot…
Back To The Future 1, 2 & 3 (1985, 1989, 1990)
“Roads? Where we’re going, we don't need roads.” And to prove his point, Doc Brown reveals that his time traveling car has more than one trick up its exhaust: it can fly. One of the best final scenes in a movie ever, surely? The DeLorean used in the trilogy was a 1981 DMC-12, with a 6-cylinder PRV (Peugeot/Renault/Volvo) engine. And it’s amazing to think that with three blockbusters’ worth of publicity, the car company still went bust.
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The Last Starfighter (1984)
The Starcar that whisks top videogamer Alex Regan off to the planet Rylos was cinema’s first ever CG flying car. There was a “real”, full-sized version as well, which later had a cameo in Back To The Future 2 . Although it may have superficial similarities to a DeLorean (especially the wing doors), it is not, in fact, a DeLorean.
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Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets (2002)
When Harry and Ron miss the Hogwarts Express at the start of their second year at the school for witches and wizards, they nick Ron’s dad’s light blue 105E Ford Anglia to get there instead (bloody joyriders – what is this film teaching our kids?). But Mr Weasly has pimped the car somewhat: it can fly, turn invisible, never needs petrol and can do a TARDIS so that up to ten people, six trunks, two owls and a rat can comfortably fit inside. SFX once had a stand at a con next to the where the car used in the film was on display, and the creak the doors made when you opened and closed them was highly amusing. We amused ourselves for, ooh, minutes. No foley artists needed.
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Blade Runner (1982)
The flying cars in Blade Runner were christened spinners, though they neither span very much nor sounded a ’60s folk band (or, indeed, a ’6os soul band, if you’re American). They could be driven like cars on the ground, or perform a vertical take-off and fly away. They were designed by Syd Mead, who described them as described them as aerodyne – which means a vehicle that directs air downwards to create lift – though publicity for the film stated that the spinner was propelled by three engines: “conventional internal combustion, jet and anti-gravity”. Maybe there were different models?
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The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)
Everybody remembers Bond’s submarine Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me and the invisible Aston Martin* in Die Another Day , but he’s never had a flying car. In that department one of his adversaries definitely had the upper hand. Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun escapes using a 1974 AMC Matador with a jet engine and wings mounted on the roof. It looks oddly like the automobile equivalent of those nutters who jump off the pier at the Worthing Birdman competition very year.
( *How can any car that’s supposed to be cool be called Martin? It’s like having a Lamborghini Nigel. )
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Doctor Who
“Planet Of The Dead” (2009)
Thanks to some alien anti-gravity devices stuck to its wheels, a London double decker levitates out of the sand dunes (or more accurately, human remains dunes) of “The Planet Of The Dead”. But it wasn’t the show’s first flying bus…
“Delta And The Bannermen” (1987)
…That honour went to the Navarino Nostalgia Tours spaceship, which was cunningly disguised as a ’50 bus. Unfortunately, it had a collision with an early Earth Satellite and became stranded in Wales. Hang on, was this episode the blueprint for the whole Russell T Davies era?
“Gridlock” (2007)
There were thousands more flying cars in “Gridlock”, and they all looked like mini-buses. Is there a theme going on here? They also all looked identical which may be: a) a clever in-joke referencing Henry Ford’s gag about “ Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”, or b) a way of making things a bit easier for the CG FX team working on a TV budget.
“Planet Of The Spiders” (1974)
For a proper flying car in Doctor Who , you have to go all the way back to Jon Pertwee’s final story. We think the “Whomobile” may have been fueled by Ready Brek judging by that yellow halo. The prop was actually based on a invalid tricycle, and was specially commissioned for, and owned by, Jon Pertwee.
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“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968)
The quintessential flying car. It was designed by Ken Adam (most famous for creating the lavish sets in another Fleming franchise – Bond) and Rowland Emmett (who designed the mad inventions that appeared in the film) with help from the Ford racing team. The final car weighed approximately two tons, was 17 feet long and was built on a custom-made ladder frame chassis. In the film, the cars earns it name from the sound it makes. In which case what would your car be called? (Anyone currently thinking “Neeeeeoooowwwww”, can we just say, “Penis extension”?)
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Gerry Anderson
“Supercar” (1961-2)
“Joe 90” (1968-9), Space Precinct (1994-5)
Gerry Anderson has flung a fair few flying cars our way over the years. He started off with his first SF series, Supercar , the star of which could also be driven underwater. FAB 1, Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls Royce, never actually flew in the TV series of Thunderbirds , but it did take off in the big screen version, Thunderbirds Are Go , although that was only in a dream sequence (in which Lady Penelope flies Alan to a nightclub called The Swinging Star where Cliff Richard Jr is performing). In the ghastly 2004 film version, FAB 1 did fly, but by that time it was a rather ugly, heavily-modified Ford Thunderbird, and fans are never going to accept that as canon. Anderson also gave us flying police cars in Space Precinct , but they were pretty ungainly-looking, and had nothing on the police spinners in Blade Runner .
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The Fifth Element (1997)
The Fifth Element must hold the record for the most flying cars ever in a movie. Bruce Willis drives the flying version of a yellow New York taxi, chased by flying police cars weaving through flying vehicles of every make and shape imaginable (but all of which look like they’d make really cool floating bath toys).
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Repo Man (1984)
We could have included Grease in this list, but aside from the fact that the car inexplicably takes off at the end, it’s not really an SF or fantasy film. Anyway, we have out own “unexpected flying car” ending in the form of Repo Man , though it’s debatable you could call anything in Repo Man “unexpected”. This is a film in which some repo men, a gang of Mexican car-thieves and a government secret agent are all in a race to find a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu with some dead aliens in the boot, that’s being driven around Los Angeles by a crazy scientist. By the time it glows green and starts hovering, you can accept anything.
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The Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007)
It’s called a car, so we’ve included it, but is the Fantasticar really a car? It’s more like a really small personal jet. But in the film version there’s a huge, lovingly-photographed Dodge logo on the bonnet, so the product placement guys obviously felt it was car enough to make some money out of. The Fantasticar first appeared in the Fantastic Four comics in issue three, but it was rapidly updated in issue 12 for the reasons given below…
