Flying Spinner Police Vehicle from the Film "Blade Runner"

Out of the three models built by Gene Winfield Custom Car Designs, this Spinner was built to hang from a crane for shots where the vehicle is flying. Designed to navigate and surveil the urban jungle of Los Angeles, the Spinner functions as a terrestrial car while also being able to hover and fly. There are multiple explanations of how the Spinner can hover/take off vertically: press kits name a combination of engines (including a fictional anti-gravity one) as the source, while the vehicle’s designer, Syd Mead (1933-2019) claimed the vehicle lifts itself through turbines pushing air downward. In any case, Mead’s design for the Spinner would become an icon of the late 20th-century imaginations of future technology. Adaptations of the Spinner appear in Back to the Future Part II (1989), The Fifth Element (1997), and the various film and video game offshoots of Blade Runner—including the film Blade Runner 2049 (2017). 

Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott (b. 1937), is based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) by Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). The film stars Harrison Ford (b. 1942) as Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter in the Blade Runner Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department in 2019. Although the film’s success upon release was underwhelming, Blade Runner grew to be appreciated for its dark themes and visual style influential to the cyberpunk genre. Now, the film is one of critical merit: in 2022, Sight and Sound magazine ranked Blade Runner number 54 out of 250 of “The Greatest Films of All Time.” Blade Runner has since expanded into a franchise containing sequels, video games, TV shows, and, controversially, several versions of the original movie.