We’re halfway through 2008 — living the good life in the 21st century — and still no flying cars.

We’re stuck on ground, on pavement, on four wheels. We’re driving our AMC Gremlins, Volkswagen Karmann Ghias and Dodge Darts (with the classic slant-six engine) all over the flat earth, and wondering when Albany to Lake George will take 10 minutes.

George Jetson’s flying bubble must still be on the drawing board. Maybe the tech guys are having trouble converting the cogs and sprockets of the cartoon car into a briefcase.

Maybe, in 30 or 40 years, some of us will zoom where the air is rarefied. We’ll just fly ... absolutely petrified, as Frank used to say.

Pity the motoring public of 1926. They never got the chance to drive a car that came with a supernatural shine ... a glow-in-the-dark set of wheels!.

For a while, this innovation was the talk of the engineering world. Experts said headlights would soon be a thing of the past. They would be used only for decorations and emergency equipment; luminous cars would provide enough light for the evening driver.

“It has been predicted the work of manufacturing glowing dials for watches will culminate in the development of a luminous paint for the average automobile, so that in addition to adding beauty to the car, the finish can serve some useful purpose,” read a wire story published by the Schenectady Gazette during the summer of ’26.

Radium was part of the plan ... .even though it was priced at $75,000 a gram in 1926.

“The belief prevails that, if a way is not devised to list it with the more common metals, at least some way will be devised to make one microscopic portion of radium do the work,” the newspaper said.

The bright paint jobs were part of the “daylighting” revolution.

“The term ‘daylighting’ has been used with reference to increasing visibility at curves, but in its newest sense it refers to the process of bringing daytime visibility to night driving,” the syndicated story continued. “This is already being accomplished on many boulevards where there is sufficient illumination on the darkest night to make it unnecessary to burn the headlights.”

Scientists were trying to eliminate glare. During the evening, drivers were blinding each other with bright headlights.
“It has been long realized that highways should not be dependent upon the headlights of automobiles for illumination since this results in hazardous variation in illumination,” the newspaper read.

Future cars would need headlights only for emergencies. The industry believed current spotlights could be detached from their usual places on the front end, and perhaps be used to read house numbers on dark nights.

“Headlights are headed for radical changes, engineers predict, even if they are not robbed of their time-honored mission of lighting the way for the motorist and of causing the motor world anxiety every time the sun sinks in the West,” the article concluded. “Apparently, motordom is about to push the headlight into its own limelight, and if the prediction of permanent illumination and car identity at night through luminous paint be true, the headlight will pay the penalty of obscurity for the disaster and sorrow it has occasioned humanity.”

Somewhere along the infinite corridors of time, the plan was dropped. Cars stayed Bible black, and then the reds, greens, blues and yellows moved in.
I wonder if the luminous cars would have been green, like those glow-in-the-dark watch dials. Gold would have made sense, too, and might have given cars a radical, radioactive appearance.

Now, we’re stuck with cars that do not glow. And we still have these wicked bright, blue-tinted headlights that continue the American sport of blinding other drivers when darkness falls.
Maybe the resurrected American Motors Company — and the 2038 “Flying Gremlin” — will come with luminous qualities.

“Flying Gremlin.”

Now there’s a great name for a car!

One more note. Can you imagine the first day of flying cars? Think of all the carnage — collisions left and right, exploding flux capacitors, people and machinery falling out of the sky. When people take off for the first time, I’ll be in the basement!

By the way, it’s not all that far-fetched. If you “google” “Skycar,” you can take a look at Paul Moller’s sleek creation. He’s been trying to build a flying automobile since 1974.