I remember when I was a kid, I thought flying cars were right around the corner. My friends and I would talk about how we would take our drivers tests in the sky. However, as I grew up, I obviously realized that flying cars are nearly impossible. Unless someone comes up with a VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) car that doesn’t torch everything underneath it, no one is making a flying car. However, that doesn’t mean one can’t dare to dream and build a winged E39 5 Series.
In this new video from Vilebrequin, we get to see what happens when the bolt a set of wings to the top of an E39 5 Series and launch off of ramp at high speed. That might seem pretty simple but it was actually quite complicated. First, they had to build the wings and mount them to the roof of the car, which wasn’t an easy task in itself. Then, they had to build the ramp, whose base was made from shipping containers.
Once that was done, they had to create a remote control system to drive the car. Obviously, they couldn’t just drive the car off the ramp in hopes that its wings would carry it, as the ramp was quite high off the ground. If it didn’t fly during such a jump, the person driving it would be quite dead. So they build a remote control driving device that they could use to drive the car remotely off the ramp. To do so, they rigged another E39 5 Series to be driven while a passenger wore a virtual reality helmet, with a feed from the flying E39, telling the driver where to go.
After a few failed attempts, the flying E39 was up in the air. It launched off the ramp with a pretty decent speed, in hopes that it would be enough speed for its wings to carry it. So what is enough and did the little bugger fly?
Well, no. It launched off the ramp well but then it just went in an arc and smashed into the ground. So it barely flew, if that’s even what you call it, and it was smashed to pieces. It did seem as if it might majestically, just for a moment, then it quickly crashes back down to Earth in spectacular fashion. As doomed as I knew the project was, I was certainly hoping that it glided for just a few seconds before finally crash landing but, as I said before, flying cars just ain’t real.
