We are all familiar with R. Buckminster Fuller’s revolutionary ideas for buildings such as the geodesic dome. Less well known is that in 1933 he came up with a design for a futuristic car called the Dymaxion car that was front-wheel drive with rear steering and had just three wheels. The rear wheel could turn by 90o, allowing for a very tight turning circle.
His idea was that this would be the first step towards a car that could also fly. Three prototypes were made but they did not catch on. Now some people have made a new version based on the original design.
A documentary called The Last Dymaxion was made about the man and his car and you can see the trailer here.
Fuller died in 1983. It turns out that the FBI had been monitoring him for the period 1951-1968 during the height of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with communism and had quite an extensive file on him.
One word springs readily to mind, and that word is “deathtrap”.
There were other very innovative details about the Dymaxion car. The one I thought the most useful was that the engine was built in balanced 2-cyclinder sets which could be switched in when power was needed. So when cruising down a freeway, at a constant speed, all but 2 cylinders would shut down to conserve gas. But if acceleration was needed, the other cylinders would start firing.
I don’t think anyone else did that until BMW in the late 1990’s, sixty years later.
Unfortunately, they were so light (made of aluminum) that while aerodynamic from the front, they were unstable when exposed to sheer winds. So, yeah, kyoseki is correct, they were not suitable for mass production.
Just for the record, this is not to be confused with the Dymaxion house which Fuller also designed as a cheap house built out of surplus aircraft aluminum. The intent was that the house would hang from a steel pole set in concrete and would be flown in by helicopter to any location. If you get to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, you can tour one of the houses which is on permanent display there. The biggest problem I could see with the house (alongside of a lot of small problems) is that being round furniture/rugs/etc. would be hard to find which would fit. (Heck, if you want to take the trip, we’re local and have spare tickets to get you in for free.)
Oh, man, what a ludicrous design. It’s like a backwards Reliant Robin with the cockpit of a B-29 bomber for bodywork. Fuller was inventing the future, just not anything practical for everyday use.
The tadpole three wheel layout (two front, one rear) is far superior to the trike layout (one front, two rear) for stability, control and stopping, but only if the two front wheels are for steering and braking, and the single rear tire is for power. Unfortunately, few have tried it (see: T-Rex, the Elio vaporware car), and three wheels means you need a motorcycle license, not a car license.
Buck Rogers would have been proud to own one.
Don’t forget the excellent Morgan 3 wheeler http://www.morgan3wheeler.co.uk/smallsite/smallindex5.html
My high school physics teacher had one of the original ones, he’d show up in a cloud of blue smoke, flying cap, goggles & scarf, it was quite a sight, as was watching him try to get the buggering thing to start to go home again.
… as for the motorcycle license thing, it varies from state to state, I notice that CanAm keep advertising their Spyder 3 wheeler as a way to get your motorcycle license, but in California, for example, while 3 wheelers are considered motorcycles, the M1 endorsement only covers two wheeled motorcycles, three wheeled motorcycles are still covered under the car license.
left0ver1under,
IIRC the idea was that all three wheels would be both powered and steerable, although the technology wasn’t quite there yet. That doesn’t appear to be what the people in the video built, though, even though it’s absolutely possible now; put a hub mounted electric motor in each wheel, and a powerplant or battery pack somewhere to drive them, front two steerable in tandem on an axle, rear wheel steerable independently.