PHOTO BY DAVID YANDO
THE LANE MOTOR MUSEUM'S DYMAXION CAR REPLICA IS THE SCARIEST THING WE'VE EVER DRIVEN
The Lane Motor Museum didn’t spend eight years building an incredibly artful replica of the Dymaxion Car just to make Buckminster Fuller look bad. At least, we don’t think they did -- museum director Jeff Lane is too nice of a guy to pick on the famed futurist, especially since Fuller, who died in 1983, isn’t around to defend himself.
We wish he were still around today, though, so we could ask him personally what he was thinking when he penned the Dymaxion car. Because we have to report, with some sadness, that it’s scariest, most poorly designed vehicle we’ve ever been behind the wheel of.
Of course, blaming Bucky for the car’s shortcomings isn't entirely fair, for the Dymaxion car as we know it was far from complete. In its final form, the 20-foot-long podlike contraption would negotiate the skies using some sort of jet-like propulsion system (never mind that jets hadn’t quite been invented when the car was developed). Yes, it was supposed to fly.
Or so Bucky claimed.
Spend any amount of time chatting with Jeff Lane about the Dymaxion car and that phrase -- “Bucky claimed” -- is one you’ll hear an awful lot.
As in: Bucky claimed that the Dymaxion car could carry up to 11 passengers cross-country at 90 mph -- or was it 120 mph? -- while returning 30 mpg.
Bucky also claimed he drove a flathead Ford V8-powered Dymaxion to six-digit mileage without a rebuild or an overhaul.
But this has to be our personal favorite: Bucky claimed to have driven the streamliner onto a midget car racetrack in the Bronx -- and promptly beat the track’s lap record time by 50 percent.
And then there’s that flying-car bit, which we stumbled upon while doing some digging on Fuller and his brief foray into automotive design. Even by the low standards of the flying-car industry, that effort didn’t get very far; if its hypothetical airworthiness was on par with its roadworthiness, that’s probably a good thing for all of us.
The Dymaxion car, coming at you fast! But not too fast. PHOTO BY DAVID YANDO
CAR LIFE
Rare Dymaxion Car blueprints head to the auction block
Buckminster Fuller had a gleaming, streamlined vision of the future -- a Dymaxion (his own word) future full of mass-produced pod houses, odd sleep schedules and geodesic domes. Lots and lots of ...
Even decades after his death, Buckminster Fuller has no shortage of proponents. Lane, an even-keeled sort of guy, doesn’t seem to buy fully into the Fuller hype -- hence the frequent use of the “Bucky claimed” disclaimer.
Yet he’s not willing to write Fuller off as a crank or huckster, instead considering him a true visionary -- a thinker too busy looking decades forward to trouble himself with the day-to-day operations of a business. Or the intricacies of chassis engineering, or engine cooling, or really anything having to do with designing, building and selling a functional, safe automobile.
The Dymaxion car’s bizarre configuration should be the first clue that it’s not exactly going to be the most stable thing on three wheels. The reverse-trike configuration is a decent start, but it all quickly goes to hell: though it is front-wheel drive, the Dymaxion car’s Ford V8 is way in the back -- just ahead of the singular rear wheel, which is cradled by a suspension system cobbled together from Ford components.
That rear wheel is how you steer the car, for some reason. In theory, this front-wheel-drive-rear-wheel-steering configuration gives the Dymaxion car a very tight turning radius. In practice, it walks all over the road, even at the low speeds (20 mph to 35 mph) we held it down to; crowned or rutted road surfaces are extremely difficult to negotiate.
Keeping Bucky’s beached whale pointed straight demands slow, deliberate and constant steering adjustment. At the back of our minds there was the fear that a quick input or an overcorrection would send the car swinging back and forth across the road like an out-of-control pendulum, ultimately leading to our horrible, embarrassing death. This fear was not unfounded, as the car the Lane Museum replicated most closely (prototype number one of three built) killed its driver back in 1933.
One of the few ways the Lane's Dymaxion replica differs from the original is its steering. Fuller's plans called for a staggering 35 turns-to-lock; the Lane's car requires just six. Jeff Lane explains this more direct setups makes the necessary, frequent corrections more immediate, reducing the likelihood that a novice driver overcorrecting. Other upgrades were made in the name of safety : Hydraulic steering and hydraulic brakes replace their cable-actuated counterparts on the original cars.
Ready for liftoff. PHOTO BY DAVID YANDO
CLASSIC CARS
We drive the propeller-powered Helicron (and other surreal French cars) at the Lane Motor Museum
When the Lane Motor Museum invites you to spend a day driving an incredible lineup of vintage French cars, you don’t mention the fact that you’ve never so much as sat in a Renault before: ...
All that said, the Dymaxion is not the practically self-steering cruiser that Bucky claimed -- or imagined -- it was. Surprise!
It apparently doesn’t get all that much easier to drive with experience, either. Lane and company drove the car down to the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance this year. That single road trip was probably long enough to make Lane the most experienced living Dymaxion pilot, but even he said his shoulders were aching by the end of a day in the car. Not because you have to wrestle with the wheel, but because of the intense, shoulder-cramping focus it took just to keep the thing moving down the road.
Also, it overheats. Part of that could be remedied by modifying of the roof-mounted air intake. Currently, the snorkel is next to useless; apparently, the flathead's heat creates a positive-pressure area in the engine bay area, which makes air intake difficult. It would be easy enough to fix, but then, Lane would probably argue, you might as well reinvent the complicated suspension. Or configure the car for front-steering; that's something Fuller might have pursued had he built a second-generation prototype.
At that point, however, you’re no longer dealing with a Dymaxion car, and a running, driving Dymaxion car is precisely what Jeff Lane wanted. Remember, the Lane Motor Museum is a place where you can get an up-close look at propeller-powered French oddities; it’s a collection that recognizes the importance of intriguing automotive dead-ends. After all, nobody knew for sure that a front-wheel drive rear-steering three-wheeler wouldn’t work until Fuller tried it…
Further, more than seeing a patina-wearing relic in a museum, this new replica -- everything gleaming and the varnish fresh -- gives a sense of what The Future must have looked like to Depression-era America. Look at the Dymaxion car and you’ll desperately want to root for Team Bucky, to believe that his incredibly optimistic World of Tomorrow was, or still is, possible, Dymaxion houses and luxury zeppelins and all.
As a car, it’s well nigh on useless. As an artifact, it’s invaluable. And you should be glad that we drove it, so you don’t ever have to.
Lane Motor Museum director Jeff Lane at the helm. Lane understands the importance of the Dymaxion car, flaws and all. PHOTO BY GRAHAM KOZAK
GRAHAM KOZAK - Graham Kozak drove a 1951 Packard 200 sedan in high school because he wanted something that would be easy to find in a parking lot. He thinks all the things they're doing with fuel injection and seatbelts these days are pretty nifty too. See more by this author»
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