They were the 1962 space-age family who took our ideas of what was possible and thrust them directly into the future.

More than 40 years on you could forgive the average reader for having a Jetsons flashback when the headline "Tycoon bets on British firm's 'air taxi'" leaped out from the front page of today's SCMP business pages.

Charles Ming Ka-fook, a well-known local racehorse-owning tycoon plus an unnamed friend have paid HK$27.1mn for a stake in Avcen, a British company that is designing air taxi Jetpod.

The article goes on to state that Mr Ming Ka-fook believes "he has found a winner much faster than any of his runners on the track". The aircraft will cost £800,000 ($11 million), plus US$450,000 for both engines (reportedly cheaper than most helicopters). Eighty per cent of the components will be produced by a state-owned aerospace manufacturer in Shenyang , Liaoning (china). The engine will be supplied by Williams International in the US, with the final assembly in England.

The Jetpod website is at the following URL.