Once the stuff of science fiction, the Skycar is rocketing toward reality fast enough to make Buck Rogers' head spin.
Picture a four-passenger sedan streaking through the clouds at 350 miles-per-hour (560 kph). Picture a souped-up sports car that takes off with the panache of a jump jet. Picture fuel mileage and - eventually - a price tag comparable to that of a mid-priced sport utility vehicle.
Now picture the prototype Skycar, sitting in streamlined splendour in a vast room at Moller International's headquarters in Davis, California. Over the next several months, the Skycar will begin its first trial flights and, its champions hope, launch a new chapter in human transportation history.
Automobile industry analysts say they are not worried that America's beloved cars are headed the way of the dodo bird. But for the Skycar team, the future is clearly in the clouds.
"This vehicle will be a total failure if it doesn't do something to significantly replace the automobile," said inventor Mr Paul Moller, who has fought for three decades to realise his vision of a future of "vertiports" and computerised airborne traffic like The Jetsons cartoon TV show.
His passion for the Skycar and its potential to change society is shared by some senior US government scientists, who say he is perfecting the technology necessary to spring commuters from earthbound traffic jams and send them flying free into the skies.
"It is not a question of if but of when," said Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA's Langley Research Centre, the US's leading civil aeronautics laboratory. "The market is there. The technology is there. What will slow this down is government regulation."
The M400 Skycar, the result of 30 years of research and the equivalent of more than $100 million (€96 million) in investment, certainly looks like futuristic transportation.
With a slim, tapered body hunched between four massive engine cases, the vehicle resembles a ruby-red Batmobile.
The passenger compartment features a bubble-like glass canopy to provide views of the landscape below and the endless sky above. The four-seater model is designed to carry a maximum payload of 740 pounds (335 kg), have a range of up to 900 miles (1,440 km) and get roughly 15 miles-per-gallon (24 kpg), using regular automotive fuel.
The price tag, thus far, is estimated at a steep $1 million. But Mr Moller officials say they are confident that, with time and increased production, the price could be brought down to a more affordable $60,000.
Mr Jack Allison, the company's vice-president, said: "We want to be close to 100 per cent confident before we take it in front of the public," Mr Allison said.
Mr Moller's supporters in the scientific community say the Skycar will revolutionise the way people live, a transformation as great as when the automobile supplanted the horse-and-buggy.
With advances in satellite tracking technology, planners are close to implementing a system that would allow computers to run small aircraft like the Skycar as 100 per cent "fly-by-wire" vehicles - removing the need for on board pilots and removing the danger of a fender bender at 20,000 feet (6,096 metres).
Automobile industry analysts have been a much harder sell, with few placing bets that the station wagon is headed for the dust heap of history any time soon.
"You haven't even got computers running cars yet, let alone aircraft," said Mr Jim Hall, an analyst at Autopacific. "But the real issue is affordability, and the affordability of this thing is not proven. If they end up making a $300,000 flying car that's great, but it's not a growth market."
