At first I thought this timesonline.com article was brought to you by our friends at the Onion, but apparently, it’s the real deal, so without further ado…

It seems a “flying car” is not that far away – brought to you by the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia company (note: their website seems to be temporarily down – no doubt crashed by sci-fi fans). Supposedly, we’ll see this two-seater car that can transform itself into a plane in 15-seconds, in showrooms sometime next year.

Questions: Can it take you where you want to go? Well, it can fly about 500 miles on a tank of gas – at about 115 mph. Cost to you? About $200,000. Where to find car/plane runways? Well, planes can legally take off from roadways in Alaska, but elsewhere – who knows…

In the water, he makes like a fish. On land, he makes like a lot of money, especially with all his commercial deals.

And you can see one of Michael Phelps’ ads on the site of that veritable Renaissance man, Perez Hilton — if you just click here.

This particular commercial is for Citation Shares, a division of Cessna – which offers “fractional jet ownership”. You see Phelps boarding the snazzy plane with all his medals on, but it’s no problem! He’s on a private jet and doesn’t have to go through the hassles of metal detectors and security stuff. Get it?

Not bad, actually.

Were talking private jets here, and no, not those pathetic Lears. Were talking about people who buy Airbus A380sthe largest aircraft in the world (much bigger than a 747 the Airbus seats 555-passengers).

A New York Times article says theres now a VIP market for these things; you know, people who buy them for their own private travel.

The first customer? A Saudi billionaire named Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Price tag? Prince isn’t talking, but Airbus says one of these babies runs a tad over $319-million, plus several hundred million to make it all pretty inside. I guess were talking diamond encrusted wallpaper. Or toilet bowls. Something like that.