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by krazydad 3578 days ago
Says headlines in 1950s Popular Mechanics, and annually since then...
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This trope is stunningly older than I'd have thought.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=flying+car&yea...

Starts in the 1750s, though some of that is simply justipostion of the words "flying" and "car", often with intervening punctuation.

A 1923 article: https://books.google.com/books?id=BcIrAQAAMAAJ&q=%22flying+c...

"future flying car will weigh far less than our present-day cars. The entire upper part of the body will be enclosed in an unbreakable, unburnable, glass-like substance. This is quite necessary, particularly for the ..."

And from 1810:

https://books.google.com/books?id=P_AOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR3&dq=%22...

"likewise instructions and plans, for making a flying car with wings, in which a man may sit, and, by working a small lever, cause himself to ascend and soar through the air with the facility of a bird..."