The hallmark of retrofuturism is this idyllic, pristine vision of the future in which artists of all stripes imagined how space exploration, robotics, or modes of transportation would be in a few decades. The roads and highways were no exception, and in fact, iconic magazines from the ‘50s and ‘60s, like Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Modern Mechanix, dedicated articles, specials, and covers to depicting so-called “dream highways” where flying cars and other inventions traveled from one place to another.
These magazines and what they suggested shared certain characteristics: they generally based their articles on news about scientific advancements and real technology, but they always went one step further and commissioned illustrators and engineers to make drawings and conceptual designs that were often based on rather vague descriptions. If someone said that they were working on a prototype for a flying car with four vertical turbines, the rest did not really matter: off went the artist to illustrate it with a traditional family inside, landing in their home garden on a perfectly manicured lawn. The artistic details were more important than the technical specifications, and in fact, some turned out to be quite shocking – when they did not defy the laws of physics.