Dymaxion car

thumb|285px|The Dymaxion car, c. 1933, artist [[Diego Rivera shown entering the car, carrying coat]]

The Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair. Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess – using donated money as well as a family inheritance Fuller associated the word Dymaxion with much of his work, a portmanteau of the words dynamic, maximum, and tension, to summarize his goal to do more with less.

The Dymaxion's aerodynamic bodywork was designed for increased fuel efficiency and top speed, and its platform featured a lightweight hinged chassis, rear-mounted V8 engine, front-wheel drive (a rare RF layout), and three wheels. With steering via its third wheel at the rear (capable of 90° steering lock), the vehicle could steer itself in a tight circle, often causing a sensation. Fuller noted severe limitations in its handling, especially at high speed or in high wind, due to its rear-wheel steering (highly unsuitable for anything but low speeds) and the limited understanding of the effects of lift and turbulence on automobile bodies in that era – allowing only trained staff to drive the car and saying it "was an invention that could not be made available to the general public without considerable improvements." Shortly after its launch, a prototype crashed and killed the Dymaxion's driver.

Despite courting publicity and the interest of auto manufacturers, Fuller used his inheritance to finish the second and third prototypes, selling all three, dissolving Dymaxion Corporation and reiterating that the Dymaxion was never intended as a commercial venture. One of the three original prototypes survives, and two semi-faithful and was the subject of the 2012 documentary The Last Dymaxion.

In 2008, The New York Times said Fuller "saw the Dymaxion, as he saw much of the world, as a kind of provisional prototype, a mere sketch, of the glorious, eventual future."

History

Fuller would ultimately go on to fully develop his Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science, his theory of using all technology on behalf of all people as soon as possible, a term used in physics and mathematics, referring to length, width, depth and time.

Regarding the 4D transport, author Lloyd S. Sieden, wrote in his 2000 book Bucky Fuller's Universe:

Fuller was offered $5,000 (2023: $119,500) from wealthy former stock trader and socialite Philip (variously reported as Phillip) Pearson and his wife Temple Pearson (niece of Isadora Duncan) of Philadelphia. and hired naval architect Starling Burgess and a team of 27 workmen, including former Rolls-Royce mechanics.<br />Signage on the Tongue Pointe, former Locomobile building read 4D Dymaxion.

Design

Because Fuller was aiming for what he called Omni Medium Transport, a vehicle that could go anywhere,

Fuller favored front-wheel drive, studying the way a wheelbarrow could more effectively pull its load rather than pitch forward when pushing a load.

Prototypes One, Two and Three

Prototype One, at long, was built on a hinged two-frame chassis constructed of lightweight chromoly steel with aircraft-type dished lightening holes The suspension used leaf springs "turned sideways" (transverse leaf springs) central periscope providing rearward vision, larger side windows, recessed headlights and a roof-mounted stabilizer with rear-facing exhaust outlet.

:Videos: In contemporary videos (see External links, below), Fuller is seen driving the vehicle at high speed. Another shows Fuller showing off his speeding ticket, demonstrating its ability to turn "on itself", easily parallel parking in a space only six inches longer than the car, remarking that he averaged over 22 mpg (up to 30 mpg), and commenting on its stability, with a center of gravity both low and ahead of the midpoint of its wheelbase.

Later prototype history

Prototype One was badly damaged in the noted car crash at the time of the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress fair. The car was repaired and sold to the director of the automotive division of the U.S. Bureau of Standards (BoS), only to be subsequently destroyed in a fire at the Washington D.C. garage of the BoS. Once owned by Leopold Stokowski, it was estimated to have been driven 300,000 miles.

In 1934, Noguchi drove a completed Dymaxion on an extended road trip through Connecticut with Clare Boothe Luce and Dorothy Hale, stopping to see Thornton Wilder in Hamden, Connecticut, before driving to Hartford for the out-of-town opening of Gertrude Stein's and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts.

One of the prototypes was driven extensively in a campaign to raise funds in support of the Allies in WW II. The Dymaxion rolled over during the crash, killing its driver, Gulf employee Francis T. Turner, and seriously injuring its passengers: aviation pioneer (and noted spy) William Sempill and Charles Dollfuss, curator of France's first air museum.

Fuller himself would later crash Prototype Two, with his only surviving daughter, Allegra (Allegra Fuller Snyder), aboard.

Auto industry

Fuller received interest from Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Henry Kaiser as well as companies including Packard, Studebaker and Curtiss-Wright. In his 1988 book, The Age of Heretics, author Art Kleiner said bankers had threatened to recall their loans, feeling the car would destroy sales for second-hand cars and for vehicles already in distribution channels. in cooperation with vintage racing restoration company Crosthwaite & Gardiner. Foster's team conducted extensive research to replicate its interior, which had completely deteriorated on the only surviving prototype and had not been well documented. Foster was able to borrow Prototype Two under the condition he would also restore its interior. Prototype Two was shipped to the U.K. in order for the work to be carried out before returning to the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.

The Lane Dymaxion Replica was commissioned by the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, and built by craftsmen in Pennsylvania (chassis) and the Czech Republic (bodywork). After driving the Lane replica in 2015, automotive journalists Jamie Kitman and Dan Neil described it as having very poor stability and vehicle control.

References

External links

, excerpt from the Robert Snyder film, The World of Buckminster Fuller, 1971
, with Amelia Earhart as passenger
The Dymaxion Car – The Futuristic Vehicle That Remains in the Future
CFD Analysis of Dymaxion Car