A French citizen from 1918, Vuia led the Romanians (especially Transylvanians) of France in the Resistance during World War II.

[6] Vuia was born to Romanian parents—Simion Popescu, a priest, and his second wife, Ana Vuia—living in Surducul Mic and/or Bujor, where he attended the local primary school, and Făget, a village in the Banat region, Austro-Hungarian Empire, (modern-day Romania); the place is now called Traian Vuia.

"[8] He returned to Lugoj, where he studied the problem of human flight and designed his first flying machine, which he called the "airplane-car".

He attempted to build the machine, but due to financial constraints decided to go to Paris in July 1902, hoping to find someone interested in financing his project, possibly balloon enthusiasts.

Vuia then presented his plan to the Académie des Sciences in Paris on 16 February 1903, but was rejected with the comment "The problem of flight with a machine which weighs more than air can not be solved and it is only a dream.

The wing was mounted on the apices of these frames and resembled those of Otto Lilienthal's gliders, with a number of curved steel tubes radiating outwards from centres at the apex of each of the side frames, braced by wires attached to a pair of kingposts, and covered in varnished linen.

The British aviation historian Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith described this aircraft as "the first man-carrying monoplane of basically modern configuration", yet "unsuccessful" because it was incapable of sustained flight.

[19] The French journal L'Aérophile emphasized that Vuia's machine had the capability to take off from a flat surface, without assistance such as an incline, rails, or catapult.

This aircraft had the same basic configuration as the Vuia I-bis, but was both smaller and lighter, with a total weight (including pilot) of 210 kg (460 lb) and a wingspan of 7.9 metres (26 ft).

[22] Vuia succeeded in making a brief powered hop on 5 July, travelling 20 m (66 ft), but damaging the aircraft and suffering slight injuries on landing.

[25] Vuia made the first known public demonstration of his airplane on 8 October 1906, when he became airborne for four meters, witnessed by Ernest Archdeacon and Édouard Surcouf.

[18] Another journal of the period, Flight, credited him with a five-meter hop on 8 October 1906, as the earliest entry in a list of his tests shown in a table of "the performances which have been made by the most prominent aviators of the last few years.