Dymaxion Car Being Restored 121
An anonymous reader notes that R. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car is being restored by the company Crosthwaite and Gardiner. Only three of the vehicles were produced in the 1930s and only one survives. "Synchronofile.com has been granted the great honor of announcing the restoration of the Dymaxion Car — because our readers are now invited to help in the project. Can you identify the manufacturer for the component shown at the link?"
Re:30 MPG... in the 1930s (Score:4, Insightful)
If you took that thing and updated it to meet current U.S. safety and emissions requirements, you'd get nowhere near the same gas mileage.
speaking as an amateur machinist... (Score:2, Insightful)
Who *cares* who made the part? It'd obviously be trivial for any competent machine shop to duplicate.
Re:30 MPG... in the 1930s (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah, because all of those cars from the sixties and early seventies got such great gas mileage before they had to add the emissions control equipment. And the cars were so much lighter then too without seatbelts and air bags.
Re:Crumpet catcher (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, "crumpet catcher" nice.
Although I believe the historically correct nomenclature is "Vaginal lodestone"
Re:Pretty cool ride, actually (Score:4, Insightful)
In at least this respect, B. Fuller should have taken the advice of automotive industry engineers of the day, who would have told him that this (steering arrangement) was a waste of time. It is generally presumed to be impossible to build a mechanical rear-wheel-steering system that exhibits positive stability (that being the natural tendency to hold a straight line, AND to return to a straight line on its own when you release the steering controls in a turn).
Positive stability isn't necessary for slow vehicles such as forklifts and construction and agricultural tractors, but it is critical for high-speed vehicles.
I recall reading that one (Dymaxion) was eventually converted to front-wheel steering, just so that it could to an exhibition run on a test track at typical car speeds.
~
Re:Pretty cool ride, actually (Score:3, Insightful)
wrong. 1933 it got 36mpg WITH A V8 ENGINE and a 20 FOOT LONG BODY.
geniuses like fuller arent around anymore. dont you love progress ?
I've long been a fan of this vehicle, but it's basically a light airplane fuselage stripped of wings and control surfaces. Of course it will have great economy and straight-line performance. That doesn't make it a practical, comfortable or safe ground vehicle.
Modern computerized control systems could probably address its stability issues, but a competitive modern version would probably have to be much heavier to provide crashworthiness, sound deadening, climate control, etc. Highway mileage would always be great because of the aerodynamic shape (and that's probably what gets quoted for the original vehicle). City mileage probably wouldn't be much better than any midsized SUV (and I suspect the original city mileage wasn't so great with its flathead engine).