It’s just bizarre every which way you look, seems awful but for some reason I like it. The entire drivetrain serving as a sort of wheel-driven inboard-outboard propeller wastes so much space, terrible as far as stability but is still somehow cool as heck.
The design attempts to be aerodynamic, but the vehicle isn’t capable of reaching sufficient speed for aero to matter, and it’s got what looks like over a foot of ground clearance so it would go airborne even if it could. Those wheels somehow don’t look right, though. Diameter is too large, which puts the vehicle too far off the ground. I suspect they were originally much smaller.
It’s as if a mad scientist obsessed with implementing his vision of that specific drivetrain configuration got together with a talented designer and came up with this on a practically nonexistent budget.
They have a lot of fun, wacky cars at the Lane Motor Museum. I particularly like the Dymaxion. Cash-strapped postwar Germans weren’t the only ones building strange, impractical 3 wheelers. Buckminster Fuller got in on the act too.
I see a lot of this in the classic GMC motorhome of the 70's, oddly enough. Similar construction, aircraft grade aluminum skin predominating but the Dymaxion has wood structural support whereas the GMC is aluminum also.
Wouldn't have thought that Carhartt duck fabric color would look so good next to aluminum.