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  1. 1 The Dymaxion car was Buckminster Fuller’s streamlined, three-wheeled car, first unveiled in July 1933. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  2. 2 Only three were ever made. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  3. 3 Only one original survives: car No. 2, in the permanent collection of the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  4. 4 It was never a commercial success. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  5. 5 Fuller saw it as more than a car. He disliked the press calling it the “Dymaxion car”, and imagined a later version with wings. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  6. 6 A flying version was beyond his means, so he concentrated on what he called the vehicle’s “ground taxiing” phase. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  7. 7 Hemmings says the name Dymaxion was made from “dynamic”, “maximum” and “ion”. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  8. 8 The National Automobile Museum’s own page said the same: Fuller coined Dymaxion from dynamic, maximum and ion. National Automobile Museum (2007)
  9. 9 Hagerty gives a different recipe: dynamic, maximum and tension. Hagerty (Lane museum)
  10. 10 Dymaxion was the brand name Fuller used for most of his inventions. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  11. 11 The name went on everything from housing to world maps, and even his personal journal, the Dymaxion Chronofile. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  12. 12 The Dymaxion House is a different Fuller design, an aluminium dwelling. The only remaining prototype is at The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Henry Ford
  13. 13 Fuller was sketching the idea, as a flying vehicle, as early as 1927. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  14. 14 His first sketches of what he called the 4D Transport borrowed the egg-shaped outline from Le Corbusier’s book Towards a New Architecture, adding three wheels on a triangulated frame. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  15. 15 He then had his close friend, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, make models of the 4D Transport, published in Fuller’s magazine Shelter in 1932. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  16. 16 Early in 1933 Anna “Nannie” Biddle, a Philadelphia socialite, offered to fund a working prototype, and advanced $1,000 in February. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  17. 17 Who paid is disputed: some say Biddle, others the former stockbroker Phillip Pearson. Hemmings thinks both probably contributed. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  18. 18 Fuller hired Starling Burgess, a famed yacht and aircraft designer, as the first employee of what became the 4D Dymaxion Corporation. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  19. 19 Burgess had designed the America’s Cup J-class yachts Enterprise and Rainbow. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  20. 20 For parts, they spent $450 on a Ford Tudor and took its engine, running gear, chassis frame and gearbox. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  21. 21 Work began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in March 1933, on the morning of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  22. 22 A thousand workers reportedly applied for a handful of jobs. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  23. 23 After two earlier workshops, the team moved in June 1933 into a Bridgeport factory that had belonged to the Locomobile Company of America. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  24. 24 Hemmings places the work in the old Locomobile factory’s dynamometer room, on the west side of Bridgeport Harbor. No trace of it seems to survive. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl, Bridgeport)
  25. 25 The staff grew to seventeen: in the writer Robert Marks’s words, Polish sheet-metal experts, Italian machine-tool men, Scandinavian woodcraftsmen and former Rolls-Royce coachmakers. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  26. 26 An April 1933 test showed that the single rear wheel gave a “death wobble” at high speed. A hinge in the right place cured it. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  27. 27 Car No. 1 was finished on 12 July 1933, Fuller’s 38th birthday. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  28. 28 It was unveiled on 21 July at the Locomobile plant before 3,000 people, among them the painter Diego Rivera. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  29. 29 Hemmings gives 12 July 1933 as the date of its public debut. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  30. 30 It was 19 feet long, weighed about 2,700 lb and cost $8,000, at a time when a 1932 Ford V-8 sold for less than $700. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  31. 31 Hemmings describes the first car as under 2,300 lb and 20 feet long, with room for 11. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  32. 32 Fuller was already making outrageous claims, telling one contact that a hundred cars were being built and most had been sold at $2,500. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  33. 33 In New York Fuller showed off by turning tight circles round traffic policemen. With officers asking for a repeat at every junction, one mile took an hour. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  34. 34 At Roosevelt Field airport the company’s sales manager, the former stunt pilot Frank Coffyn, tested it at 90 mph. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  35. 35 Al Williams, head of aviation products at the Gulf Refining Company, bought car No. 1 to promote Gulf at air shows. His $2,500 was far below its cost, but Fuller needed the money. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  36. 36 Fuller applied for a US patent on 18 October 1933. It was granted on 7 December 1937 as No. 2,101,057, assigned to the Dymaxion Corporation. US patent 2,101,057
  37. 37 The patent prefers steering by “a rear wheel or wheels”, and allows the front wheels to steer instead. US patent 2,101,057
  38. 38 Nevala-Lee notes that the patent treated the three wheels as optional. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  39. 39 In late October 1933 Colonel William Forbes-Sempill, a British aviator interested in investing, asked to see the car while the airship Graf Zeppelin was in Chicago. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  40. 40 The car was driven to Chicago by a Gulf employee, Francis T. Turner. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  41. 41 Stanford’s archive page calls Turner a famous racing driver employed by Gulf. Stanford archive
  42. 42 On the morning of 27 October 1933, with Sempill and the French aeronaut Charles Dollfus aboard, the car rolled over on Lake Shore Drive, close to the entrance of the Century of Progress World’s Fair. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  43. 43 The canvas roof was smashed. Turner, held in by his seatbelt, died in hospital of skull fractures. He was 33. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  44. 44 Sempill and Dollfus, whose belts were unfastened, were thrown out. Sempill fractured his skull, but had fully recovered by the end of the year. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  45. 45 Sempill later became infamous for passing wartime secrets to the Japanese. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  46. 46 Sempill told Fuller’s friend Vilhjalmur Stefansson that he still thought well of the car. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  47. 47 The first newspaper reports said the car had hit a “wave” in the road, and the public blamed its design. Stanford archive
  48. 48 Fuller was not there. He heard the news in Bridgeport, where work on the second car was just starting. Stanford archive
  49. 49 Fuller’s version, repeated in countless books, was that a car belonging to a Chicago South Park Commissioner rammed the Dymaxion and was removed before reporters arrived. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  50. 50 In Fuller’s own later telling, the other driver kept pulling alongside for a look and then hit the Dymaxion’s tail. Stanford archive
  51. 51 Hemmings repeats that version: a later inquiry blamed a collision with a car driven by a Chicago politician, which fled the scene. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  52. 52 Fuller’s biographer Alec Nevala-Lee, working from contemporary newspaper reports, official records and Fuller’s own letters and notes, says that story is false. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  53. 53 In his account, traffic was moving at about 40 mph when Turner turned sharply left in front of a car driven by Meyer Roth. The Dymaxion rolled, and Roth hit it on its second roll. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  54. 54 Witnesses said the other car hit the Dymaxion only after it had begun to roll. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  55. 55 Roth evidently worked as a shoe salesman. Fuller later turned him into a powerful park commissioner. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  56. 56 The inquest, held on 16 November 1933, returned a verdict of accidental death. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  57. 57 The coroner’s certificate said Turner died while “driving odd type car for publicity”. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  58. 58 The day after the crash, Fuller cabled that “steel bows would apparently have saved all hands”. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  59. 59 Nevala-Lee found the word Dymaxion missing from most news stories, and good coverage carried on for a year and a half. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  60. 60 Hemmings says the bad publicity lost Fuller and his company both customers and investors. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  61. 61 A Ford flathead V-8 sat at the back but drove the front wheels. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  62. 62 The Ford gearbox was turned round to put the engine at the rear. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  63. 63 The single rear wheel did the steering, worked by steel cables, and the car could turn in a circle only slightly bigger than its wheelbase. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  64. 64 At low speed the rear wheel could swing through up to 90 degrees, so you could park by putting the nose to the kerb and swinging the tail in. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  65. 65 The National Automobile Museum compared the rear wheel to a ship’s rudder. National Automobile Museum (2007)
  66. 66 Besides an ash frame carrying the aluminium panels, it had two steel frames, hinged together near the front wheels: one carried the engine, gearbox and driveshaft, the other the weight of the body. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  67. 67 The basic frame had no suspension. The body frame had springs without dampers, and the rear wheel had a spring and damper. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  68. 68 That made rough roads comfortable, but with the seats and weight well forward, the rear wheel sometimes struggled to stay on the ground. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  69. 69 Above about 75 mph the V-shaped underside reportedly tended to make lift, especially at the back. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  70. 70 Under a canvas roof, the body was lacquered aluminium over a wooden frame. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  71. 71 It had a single headlamp, a crush zone of balsa wood at the front, dry ice for cooling, a wraparound windscreen with no wipers, and a periscope instead of a rear window. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  72. 72 Fuller’s patent puts the driven front wheels at the widest part of the body, about a third of the way back from the nose, with the body enclosing all the wheels. US patent 2,101,057
  73. 73 Whatever Fuller later implied, it was not the first streamlined car: Chrysler had been testing in wind tunnels for years. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  74. 74 Its low steering gearing made it hard to steer, cornering was difficult and it wore its tyres badly. At high speed its tail could come off the road. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  75. 75 Fuller admitted it was even worse in crosswinds: “I had to practically fly her along the highway on a northwest gusty day.” Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  76. 76 Driving the Lane museum’s replica, Jeff Lane found 45 mph as fast as he could comfortably go. It wandered on crowned roads, and the steering did not centre itself. Hagerty (road trip)
  77. 77 Fuller claimed a top speed of 120 mph and up to 30 mpg. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  78. 78 Hemmings calls the 120 mph unproven, and unlikely given the lift at speed. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  79. 79 Nevala-Lee says it evidently peaked at around 90 mph, the fastest it ever went in public. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  80. 80 He also says Fuller claimed 40 miles to the gallon. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  81. 81 The Lane Motor Museum gives 30 mpg, up to 11 passengers and 90 mph. Lane Motor Museum, 2015
  82. 82 Hemmings gives a claimed 22 mpg fully loaded and up to 30 mpg partly loaded. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  83. 83 The National Automobile Museum’s 2007 page said about 120 mph and 25 to 30 mpg. National Automobile Museum (2007)
  84. 84 Alfred Taylor, a London engineer who wanted a licence to sell the car overseas, had agreed to pay $5,000 for a demonstration car. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  85. 85 Car No. 2 was finished in January 1934. Its British buyers had cancelled, and Hemmings says it was later sold to a group of the company’s mechanics. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  86. 86 Hagerty says Fuller kept the second car as a demonstrator after his next customer cancelled, and rolled it in May 1935 with his wife and daughter inside. Hagerty (Lane museum)
  87. 87 Car No. 3 had a prominent tail fin, reportedly to improve airflow and handling. It was eventually sold to the conductor Leopold Stokowski, who later used it to promote war bonds in Brooklyn. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  88. 88 By then investors’ money had dried up, and Fuller reportedly spent most of his family inheritance building car No. 3. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  89. 89 Fuller booked a stand at the 1934 New York Auto Show, but Hemmings says pressure from Chrysler got it cancelled. He parked outside the main entrance instead, drawing perhaps bigger crowds than the new Chrysler Airflow inside. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  90. 90 He took the Dymaxion back to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934, but no sales or investors followed. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  91. 91 In 1934 Isamu Noguchi drove an original Dymaxion on a road trip to Connecticut. Lane Motor Museum, 2015
  92. 92 Only two more cars were built before the company folded. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  93. 93 Fuller later claimed, falsely, that he had paid back his investors, and his official biographies left Biddle out. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  94. 94 Decades later he still insisted: “She was the most stable car in history.” Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  95. 95 Gulf repaired car No. 1 and later sold it to an engineer who had tested it at the National Bureau of Standards. It was then used to advertise soft drinks, and was destroyed in 1943 when it caught fire after refuelling. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  96. 96 Hemmings puts that fire in a garage in Washington, DC. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  97. 97 Hagerty’s road-trip report says car No. 1 was destroyed in a rollover in 1939. Hagerty (road trip)
  98. 98 The Lane Motor Museum’s summary says two of the cars were sold, and one was destroyed in a crash, the other in a fire. Lane Motor Museum, 2015
  99. 99 The National Automobile Museum’s 2007 page said three were built in 1933 and 1934 before Fuller ran out of cash, and that Nos 1 and 3 had disappeared. National Automobile Museum (2007)
  100. 100 Car No. 3 disappeared after the Second World War, possibly in a Korean War scrap drive. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  101. 101 CNN says it was cut up for scrap metal in the 1950s. CNN, 2019
  102. 102 The earliest known owners of car No. 2 were a Bridgeport couple, who sold it for $1 in 1950 to Theodore Mezes of Mesa, Arizona. He left it in his back garden to deteriorate until 1968. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  103. 103 That year three University of Arizona engineering students recognised it and, afraid of being outbid by Bill Harrah, paid $3,000 for it. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  104. 104 CNN’s version has Arizona State engineering students finding it on a farm, where it had been used as a chicken coop. CNN, 2019
  105. 105 The students lent it to museums, then sold it to Harrah in 1978 for $20,000. It passed with part of his collection to the National Automobile Museum. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  106. 106 For years it did not run, and its interior was so poor that the museum blocked off its windows. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  107. 107 Prompted by the architect Norman Foster, the British firm Crosthwaite and Gardiner gave No. 2 a cosmetic restoration, including a new interior. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  108. 108 Hemmings’ Kurt Ernst dates that restoration to 2009. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  109. 109 The museum then went looking for a working 1934 Ford flathead V-8 to make it run, and in September 2018 launched a fundraising campaign for the mechanical work. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  110. 110 When CNN visited in 2019, the cosmetic work was finished and the museum was researching the mechanics, hoping to make it run again. CNN, 2019
  111. 111 Foster also had Crosthwaite and Gardiner build a new Dymaxion from scratch. Painted green with a white roof and a stabilising fin, it was first shown in 2010. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  112. 112 Daniel Strohl of Hemmings says it was patterned on No. 2. Hemmings (Daniel Strohl)
  113. 113 A Hemmings photo caption by Kurt Ernst calls it a recreation of No. 3. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  114. 114 The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville finished its replica of car No. 1 in 2015, after eight years, and put it on display from 26 February. Lane Motor Museum, 2015
  115. 115 It sits on a 1935 Ford chassis with a 1940 engine. Its wooden body frame was made in the Czech Republic by Mirko Hrazdira. Hagerty (road trip)
  116. 116 Jeff Lane once drove it the 600 miles to the Amelia Island Concours in Florida. Hagerty (Lane museum)
  117. 117 Hemmings sees its use of interior space, like the Stout Scarab’s, as a forerunner of the minivan. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  118. 118 Front-wheel drive, though with the engine at the front, is now the industry standard. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  119. 119 Hemmings adds that after the crash and the bad publicity, few builders, professional or amateur, have tried a car laid out like it. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  120. 120 The same museum looks after the 1967 Gyro-X, a two-wheeled car held up by a gyroscope. Hagerty (Lane museum)
  121. 121 In 1945 William Stout, designer of the Stout Scarab, predicted atomic-powered cars. Times Colonist (Bill Vance)
  122. 122 Francis T. Turner was at the wheel when it crashed. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  123. 123 On 27 October 1933 car No. 1 rolled over in Chicago, and its driver, Francis T. Turner, was killed. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)
  124. 124 Nevala-Lee describes Charles Dollfus as an aeronaut and an attaché with the French Air Ministry. Slate (Alec Nevala-Lee), 2022
  125. 125 Hemmings, spelling him Dolfuss, calls him the Air Minister of France, as Fuller himself did. Hemmings (Kurt Ernst)