This was their 3-wheeled prototype vehicle. They better put a red flag on the back of that thing, a biker could put his eye out.
This was their 3-wheeled prototype vehicle. They better put a red flag on the back of that thing, a biker could put his eye out.
Why didn’t they call it the “Sperm”?
Dumb.
Designer-genius R. Buckminster Fuller was one of the century's great nutjobs, a walking unorthodoxy who originally conceived of the Dymaxion as a flying automobile, or drivable plane, with jet engines and inflatable wings.
It would be one link in his vaguely totalitarian plan for the people to live in mass-produced houses deposited on the landscape by dirigibles.
Okayyyy...Deprived of wings, the Dymaxion was a three-wheel, ground-bound zeppelin, with a huge levered A-arm carrying the rear wheel, which swiveled like the tail wheel of an airplane. The first prototype had a wicked death wobble in the rear wheel.
The next two Dymaxions were bigger, heavier, and only marginally more drivable. The third car had a stabilizer fin on top, which did nothing to cure the Dymaxion's acute instability in crosswinds.
A fatal accident involving the car — cause unknown — doomed its public acceptance.
Though unworkable, this three-wheeled suppository was the boldest of a series of futuristic, rear-engined cars of the 1930s, including the Tatra, the Highway Aircraft Corporation's "Fascination" car and, everybody's favorite, the Nazi's KdF-wagen.
History Repeating
The classic Morgan three-wheeler is a much more handsome car than that pile of rubbish.
It better come with a trailer hitch because it won’t hold Mom, Junior, Junior’s 6 baseball buddies, their baseball equipment, a cooler, a tray of homemade cookies, Lil Missy and her bff, and Rover inside that thing.
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I guess it'll live on in 2009's "Star Trek" film where it made an appearance at Star Fleet Academy.