Exhibit Collage


Blade Runner
Blade Runner
"Spinner"


Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford
"Rick Deckard"
Blade Runner

This orange police car was a prop from the 1982 movie "Blade Runner" starring Harrison Ford.

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in the year 2019. The film is about genetically engineered organic robots called replicants - visually indistinguishable from adult humans - that are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as by other "mega-manufacturers" around the world. Their use on Earth is banned and replicants are used exclusively for dangerous, menial or leisure work on off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and "retired" by police special operatives known as "Blade Runners". The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the burnt out expert Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.

"Spinner" is the generic term for the fictional flying cars used in the film. A Spinner can be driven as a ground-based vehicle, and take off vertically, hover, and cruise using jet propulsion much like Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft. They are used extensively by the police to patrol and survey the population, and it is clear that despite restrictions wealthy people can acquire spinner licenses. The vehicle was conceived and designed by Syd Mead who described the spinner as an "aerodyne" - a vehicle which directs air downward to create lift, though press kits for the film stated that the spinner was propelled by three engines: "conventional internal combustion, jet, and anti-gravity". Mead's conceptual drawings were transformed into 25 working vehicles by automobile customizer Gene Winfield. A Spinner is on permanent exhibit at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington.