Flying Car Show: Inventors Insist Cars Can Fly (PHOTOS)

USA Today reports that inventors, despite the clashing designs of airplanes and automobiles, simply won't let the dream of a flying car die:

One leap that engineers and tinkerers have never quite made, however, but refuse to let die: the flying car.

Year after year a few more try. Of all those stuck stewing in traffic gridlock, who hasn't imagined soaring Jetsons-style directly to a destination?

Most flying cars never get off the page, let alone the ground. The few that do are bedeviled by lack of funding, impracticality, limited appeal or fears they may simply break apart in flight -- as some have.

The fact is that these keystones of modern transportation -- cars and planes -- have basic differences that make them a match made in hell.

"It's like trying to mate a pig and an elephant," says Lionel Salisbury, editor of the Roadable Times, a website that has made him a de facto chronicler of flying car attempts. "You don't get a very good elephant, or a very good pig."

Today, a new crop of magnificent men and women believe advanced materials and sounder business practices finally will allow their flying machines to defy skeptics.

Photos of some designs below (for more details and pictures, visit USA Today).