Designer-genius R. Buckminster Fuller was one of the century's great nutjobs, a walking unorthodoxy who originally conceived of the Dymaxion as a flying automobile, or drivable plane, with jet engines and inflatable wings.
It would be one link in his vaguely totalitarian plan for the people to live in mass-produced houses deposited on the landscape by dirigibles.
Okayyyy...Deprived of wings, the Dymaxion was a three-wheel, ground-bound zeppelin, with a huge levered A-arm carrying the rear wheel, which swiveled like the tail wheel of an airplane. The first prototype had a wicked death wobble in the rear wheel.
The next two Dymaxions were bigger, heavier, and only marginally more drivable. The third car had a stabilizer fin on top, which did nothing to cure the Dymaxion's acute instability in crosswinds.
A fatal accident involving the car — cause unknown — doomed its public acceptance.
Though unworkable, this three-wheeled suppository was the boldest of a series of futuristic, rear-engined cars of the 1930s, including the Tatra, the Highway Aircraft Corporation's "Fascination" car and, everybody's favorite, the Nazi's KdF-wagen.
History Repeating
I met Bucky and spoke with him a few times. I suppose DaVinci was thought of as a nutjob too, as I’ve always thought of Fuller as the unappreciated Leonardo of our age.
His low-cost, icosahedral designs - one frequency geodesics - could actually be ‘flown in’ to relieve suffering in disaster areas. They WERE flown to the arctic and formed the ‘DEW Line’.
I like your other description: “a walking unorthodoxy”, very apt for him. He invested his own personal fortune in the Dymaxion car...this was in 1933!
I admired him greatly.
I about fell over when I saw that he was doing a Honda add some time ago. No way would I want him endorsing any product.