Expo’s Views of Future to Include Persistent Inventor

Snug inside an egg-shaped car he began work on 24 years ago, inventor Fred Ferino asked a visitor to step back Thursday so he could demonstrate the curved fiberglass panel mounted on the vehicle’s roof.

With the flip of a switch, the butterfly wing-shaped panel began to flap.

No, the car didn’t launch into the air. Although the car boasts innovations such as a wraparound bumper and two engines--one gas, one electric--the fiberglass wing is mostly for looks.

Its futuristic appearance is part of the reason Ferino gets invited to conventions such as this weekend’s Life Improvement Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center. Another reason may be Ferino’s inspirational creativity.

“Maybe next year you won’t see the wings anymore,” said Ferino, 67. “Maybe you’ll see something else.”

He and his wife, Miriama, spent Thursday morning setting up for the three-day convention, which opens today with more than 200 exhibits and seminars ranging from financial planning to physical fitness. His goal for the show: expose the younger generation to the tradition of invention.

An Italian immigrant with only five years of formal education, Ferino took up inventing as a hobby early in life while working as an accordion maker, then as a welder and, later, a piano tuner. He invents to improve society, he says, not to make a profit.

Safety innovations became his specialty years ago after setting aside his father’s idea for a gravity-powered vehicle whose design sounds similar to a perpetual-motion machine.

Since then, he has patented his own electric roller-skates, popcorn dispensers and--proudest of all--a cloud-fueled passenger airplane equipped with egg-shaped escape pods instead of parachutes.

Despite repeated rejections from the aviation and auto industries, Ferino refuses to give up his work.

“You must have inventors,” he said. “Maybe I’m wrong, but we need to go back, try other ways.”