# The weight of cars (physics question)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-weight-of-cars-physics-question/366722>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 31, 2006, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-weight-of-cars-physics-question/366722 "2006-07-31T15:31:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2006, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-weight-of-cars-physics-question/366722/21 "2006-07-31T19:33:30Z")

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[QUOTE=Lemur866]  
You want to take a car and add wings and call it a flying car. Except that makes about as much sense as a sword that can also fire bullets. Yes, such things were actually made back in the black powder days…but they made no sense. If you want a sword, get a sword. If you want a pistol, get a pistol.

So if you need a VTOL passenger aircraft you can get one, but it’s going to be called a “helicopter”. And it’s going to be much more expensive than a car.

You want a safe vehicle not much more expensive than a car, that can hold 2-5 passengers, have VTOL, and still allow you to drive down to the neighborhood grocery store? Not going to happen. Impossible. You can have a (relatively) cheap airplane, you can have an expensive helicopter, but you can’t cram all that into an automobile chassis, much less cheaply and safely.

There’s a reason airplanes look like airplanes, not like cars. There’s a reason helicopters look like helicopters, not like airplanes or cars. And neither of them are cheap, neither of them are fail safe. Why would you expect a consumer VTOL airplane to be cheap and safe, when the only VTOL aircraft in the world are hideously expensive and horribly dangerous?  
[/QUOTE]

I was mostly joking. I know it’s not practical yet. Impossible is a very big word.

What I’m talking about is neither a helicopter or airplane. We were told we’d have a flying car by 1967: [http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/195707-sm.jpg](http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/195707-sm.jpg)

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