In 1933 Buckminster Fuller unveiled a streamlined, three-wheeled car that looked like nothing else on the road. Only three were made. Its story includes a fatal crash, so this file tells that part straight.
Which one? This is the Dymaxion car, not Fuller’s Dymaxion House or his world map. Dymaxion was the brand name he used for most of his inventions.
Part 1
The great idea
Fuller saw it as more than a car. He disliked the press calling it the “Dymaxion car”, and imagined a later version with wings. A flying version was beyond his means, so he concentrated on what he called its “ground taxiing” phase.
It had three wheels, and the single rear wheel did the steering. It could turn in a circle only slightly bigger than its own wheelbase, and at low speed you could park by putting the nose to the kerb and swinging the tail in.
Fuller hired Starling Burgess, a famed yacht and aircraft designer, and for parts they spent $450 on a Ford Tudor, taking its engine, running gear, chassis frame and gearbox.
Part 2
What actually happened
Car No. 1 was unveiled in July 1933; the exact day depends on whom you read. Al Williams of the Gulf Refining Company bought it to promote Gulf at air shows.
On the morning of 27 October 1933 it rolled over on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, close to the entrance of the Century of Progress World’s Fair. Its driver, Francis T. Turner, died in hospital of skull fractures. He was 33. Two passengers were thrown out; one, William Forbes-Sempill, fractured his skull and recovered by the end of the year. The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death.
Fuller wasn’t there. In the fullest modern account, by his biographer Alec Nevala-Lee, another car, driven by Meyer Roth, hit the Dymaxion on its second roll. The factual site’s crash page sets out the evidence.
Part 3
Where it went wrong
The first newspaper reports blamed the car’s design, and Hemmings says the bad publicity lost Fuller and his company both customers and investors.
Separately from the crash, the design did have real handling quirks. With the seats and weight well forward, the steering rear wheel sometimes struggled to stay on the ground, and above about 75 mph the underside reportedly tended to make lift. Fuller admitted crosswinds were worse still.
Then the money ran out. Fuller reportedly spent most of his family inheritance on car No. 3, a return to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934 brought no sales or investors, and only two more cars were built before the company folded.
Fuller’s storytelling didn’t help. He later turned the other driver, evidently a shoe salesman, into a powerful park commissioner, and claimed, falsely, that he had paid back his investors.
Part 4
What changed
One original survives: car No. 2, at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada, cosmetically restored at the prompting of the architect Norman Foster. Foster also had a new one built from scratch, first shown in 2010.
The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville finished a replica of car No. 1 in 2015, after eight years. Driving it, Jeff Lane found 45 mph as fast as he could comfortably go.
Hemmings sees its use of interior space as a forerunner of the minivan, but notes that few builders have since tried a car laid out like it.
The department’s view: the true story, with the real people in it, is worth more than the improved version Fuller told.
Part 5
The Useless Verdict
You could park it by putting its nose to the kerb and swinging its tail in. I park by sitting down wherever I happen to be standing.
— Useless, acting head of the Oops Department
Part 6 · The serious article
The serious version lives at dymaxion.motoring.im
This file is a short companion. The full, sourced history, with pictures, diagrams and every reference, is on its factual home:
Useless
