Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion Car Rides Again!

[Tuckerfan1053]

W00t!

Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion car was never meant to be a car. Looking like something between a Zeppelin and a VW camper van it was intended to fly, but sadly only three of these concept vehicles were ever built after tragedy struck. Now, as part of a Madrid retrospective on Bucky Fuller's work, Norman Foster, Fuller's collaborator for twelve years, has rebuilt his hero's Dymaxion car.

Richard Buckminster ‘Bucky’ Fuller was born July 12th 1895 in Milton Massachusetts. A natural mechanic, he was sent to Milton Academy, and later Harvard from where he was expelled twice; once for spending all his money partying, and again for his “irresponsibility and lack of interest”. By 32 years he was bankrupt and unemployed and drinking regularly in order to remedy the pain of losing his youngest daughter to polio and spinal meningitis. He was finally moved from depression by a suicidal vision and embarked upon “an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.” He would become an early green environmentalist and futurist, engineer, prophetic visionary, poet and author, architect and designer, mathematician, map-maker and teacher.

The article gets some of the facts about the car wrong (it was clocked doing 120 MPH), but the gist is right.

[john]

We took this clip out of the story being written on Ben and his futuristic exotic sporting car.
The Dymaxion was quite the accomplishment in design, in all sincerity, it was one of the best aero designs.
The public had a hard time swallowing the dynamic shapes though, the name tear drop comes forth as it literally describes a rain drop>>> and in engineering terms, it is the best design for cutting through wind/air resistence

Quote;
Ben's seat belts,
Perhaps it was his knowledge of airplanes that led him to this very thought of using a seat belt.
Perhaps this lends the Speedster to a race car thought again?

Ben and his family owned the airport in Champaign Illinois and leased it to others for their planes at the airport.
Ben was a commercial pilot and did transport passengers, one being Harley Earl.
Archive records are extensive on the Harris Family, they will be brought forth in another Chapter.

Was Ben first with this in his street driven sporting exotic car that logged on over 10,000 miles in it's life?

This will be best left for the reader to form their own opinion on.
A seat belt was incorporated and used in a tear drop designed vehicle around the same time Ben had drawn up the details of his car.

To our best research, it was the 20 foot long 1933 Dymaxion Teardrop Car.
Writers coined it a Concept Car and this is furthered by a Historian calling it a zenith of the first wave of semi-scientific streamlining !!.

Here is a real twist regarding the History of seat belts;
The professional driver of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion was killed while wearing the seat belt when the vehicle suddenly overturned and rolled over a few times.

The Tear Drop Car was on exhibition at the time at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair.

Reports have it that 2 other possible investors were aboard that sustained some serious injuries but survived, they had no seat belts.

Kind of ironic that the first known car crash of a driver wearing seat belts was killed !

In defense of this fabulous creation, it is said that a camera car was following to closely and it brushed the Dymaxion causing it to crash.
On the other hand, others have written that it was unstable past certain speeds and cross wind turbulence.

In knowing how Ben thought out and designed his special creation, together with his knowledge of aircraft and his other innovations, would he have not designed it without seat belts?