Buckminster Fuller, the legendary father of the Geodesic dome house, made automobiles too. Billing himself as “a maverick thinker, a gentle revolutionist, a loveable genius, an anti-academician, doctor of science-arts- design,” among many other roles, “Bucky” aimed to build the most fuel-efficient and practical car on the road. He used the word Dymaxion to describe not just his automobiles but to identify a philosophy that he followed when designing many of his futuristic creations. Bucky had designs for Dymaxion houses, Dymaxion appliances, even entire Dymaxion communities. Today he is regarded as a brilliantly original thinker.
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Bucky’s Dymaxion cars were built in 1932 in Bridgeport, CT. All three utilized frames, transmissons and V8 engines from 1932 Ford Sedans. They had two front wheels, just one in the rear (like a “tail-dragger” airplane) and a wide-expansive windshield made up of multiple facets of flat glass. The body was aluminum and built like a boat with internal rib-like wooden framework. Fuller claimed that the Dymaxion was capable of gas mileage that was twice what contemporary automobiles obtained.
There were only three prototype Dymaxion cars ever made. One car survived a spectacular crash in 1933 in which its driver died. A second ferried H.G. Wells around Manhattan before it too spectacularly crashed. This second Dymaxion eventually made its way to Arizona where it was restored by local engineering students. A third car was driven around the United States in 1944 to promote the Allied war efforts and then was sold for scrap. Such was the fate of the three original Dymaxion cars, brainchild of the truly Legendary R. Buckminster Fuller.
Today, Dymaxion Number 2 is the only original Dymaxion that exists and it survives in the Harrah Collection of the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. Bucky never did change “the entire face of the automotive industry” as he had planned with his Dymaxion cars but he certainly gave it a try.
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