A Harrowing Test Drive of Buckminster Fuller’s 1933 Dymaxion Car: Art That Is Scary to Ride

In the 1930s, the sys­tems the­o­rist, design­er and inven­tor Buck­min­ster Fuller cre­at­ed the Dymax­ion car — an aero­dy­nam­ic con­cept car that man­aged to get 30 miles per gal­lon while top­ping out at 90 miles per hour, and trans­port­ing 11 pas­sen­gers. Like Fuller’s Dymax­ion house, the three-wheel Dymax­ion car could be dis­as­sem­bled and re-assem­bled with ease. You can see vin­tage videos of both here.

The con­cept car did­n’t get much beyond the con­cept stage. Only three orig­i­nal ver­sions were built, one of which rolled over at the 1933 World’s Fair, leav­ing the dri­ver dead, three pas­sen­gers injured, and investors reluc­tant to bring the car to mar­ket. In 2010, the British archi­tect Sir Nor­man Fos­ter built a repli­ca of the Dymax­ion. You can see Dan Neil, of The Wall Street Jour­nal, take the car on a har­row­ing test dri­ve above. And if you’re intrigued enough to learn more, you can hunt down the 2012 doc­u­men­tary called The Last Dymax­ion (watch a trail­er of the film here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Utopi­an Designs: Revis­it the Dymax­ion Car, House, and Map

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”