Sir Issac Newton
Issac Newton's Laws of Motion created a base for the majority of physics. Specifically, in relation to the Ballistic Car, the Frame of Reference, that he was an aid to create, helps an observer determine that gravity is affecting all directions of an object. Newton's Inertial Reference Frame deals with this except on a rather larger scale.
Also, his discovery of the law of Universal Gravitation helped shape the general concept that gravity affected all beings in a copious amount of ways.
The ballistic car can represent many other concepts on a bigger scale. For example, through the course of history, war has plagued the earth with it's many different types of weapons and fighting tactics. Moving cannons and bombs usually demonstrate the horizontal and vertical movement that an object can face in the Frame of Reference.