Somewhere in one of J.D. Robb’s stories is a time-travelling boy who gleefully discovers flying cars in 2060.

But in one of those cases where truth is stranger than fiction, flying cars already exist in this time period. And this isn’t an April Fool’s Day hoax either. Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a startup called Terrafugia teamed up to develop a car with fold-up wings that also has the capability to get airborne. Unsurprisingly, the vehicle has been named the Transition.

Conveniently the Federal Aviation Administration has come up with a classification that the Terrafugia Transition and other such cars can fit under: Light Sport Aircraft. It’s good to know that if Terrafugia does get “roadable planes” on the market by 2011 as they seem to think they can, potential owners and drivers – or should they be called pilots? Drilots? Pivers? No matter, we have at least two years to come up with an acceptable term – will know who they’ll need to contact to become qualified behind the wheel of a Transition or similar vehicle.

Admittedly all the transition talk brings back memories of the flying car that made it into the pages of the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Catalog a few years ago with a price tag of nearly half a million dollars. Sorry, Transition, but the Batplane-looking Moller SkyCar still looks cooler, and not just because of the shiny red paint, or the promise of taking to the skyways at 350 miles per hour when traffic is at a standstill.

Word of warning: at this speed, it’s probably not a good idea to ask for a top-down model…