Talk:Dymaxion car

Untitled
Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, TN is currently creating creating a replica. 70.149.128.84 (talk) 00:22, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Engine Size
The article claims that the Dymaxion used a Ford V8 engine, but the link appears to be busted and in a documentary I just watched which mentions the car ("Ecological Design -Inventing the Future"), they claim that the car ran on what was essentially the equivalent of a lawnmower motor. I just wanted to figure out which is right, and if someone knows a reliable source that could be used. Fuiq3 (talk) 02:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)fuiq3


 * No idea if it was a Ford, but my photos show a fairly typical large V8 for the period. It wasn't powerful by today's standards, but it was no "lawnmower motor". Andy Dingley (talk) 19:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It was the famous Ford Flahead, which was introduced about the same time. Henry Ford donated three of them, and three stock differentials/rear axles to the project. 85 horse as I r4ecall. Got about 17 or 18 mpg in Ford products and something around 33mpg in the Dymaxion. ww (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * ↑ Agreed! --24.20.129.18 (talk) 05:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Chrysler
What possible connection could there be between Chrysler's failure to build a radical concept car in the mid-1930s (they lost their shirts on a fairly radical for its time production car, the Airflow, in the same era) and its losing market share to Toyota and Honda seven decades later? This comment is counterintuitive, and unless someone show strong reason not to, I'll be removing it soon. Rlquall 02:57, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

comment left in article
Someone left the following comment in the article. I'm saving it on the talk page.

[Please check the length of conventional automobiles. I went to an automobile museum in Sparks Nevada which had a Dymaxion and cars from every year in the 1930's and they were all certainly more than 10 feet long. Sitting behind the wheel of the Dymaxion reminded me a lot of my 1960's Volkswagon bus -- bench seat, floor shift, rear engine, similar roof gutter, light weight. It would be a dramatic comparison on this web page to show an image of a 1932 Ford Model Y with it's running boards and 12-foot length (or a Model B, Deuce Coupe) Also, there seems to be a lot of confusion on the web about the true dimensions and capacities of the various versions of the Dymaxion, possibly aided by unsubstantiated marketing claims.]

-- Alan McBeth 13:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * auto museum doesn't allow patrons into vehicles, as far as I know  there is only one car even remotly like this75.14.212.72 10:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm in ur message, closin ur italics tag. (You used brokets for 'I have been to that museum a fair few times', and because the first letter after the broket was I, it did italics.)--StarChaser Tyger 10:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Buckminster fuller dymaxion.jpg
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BetacommandBot 14:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

economy figure?
30mpg unheard of at the time? though from most sources i've heard/read from, the much older (and still vaguely contemporary) Model T managed 25-35mpg, despite it's primitive engine and complete lack of any kind of aerodynamic engineering (and I saw report of a DIY body conversion that allowed the original engine, plus a modified gearbox, to reach 70+ mph instead of the original ~45...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.46.180.56 (talk) 23:52, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Ben Pon / VW Transporter?
The article mentions the Dymaxion's influence on Ben Pon's VW Transporter van from the 40s. Should it link to Ben Pon (senior) rather than Ben Pon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Professor slats (talk • contribs) 04:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Comparing the VW van and the Aptera to a dymaxion are both a stretch. You might as well compare it with the Dodge Caravan.

broken link

 * 1) ^ Dymaxion Passengers: Towards a cultural history of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car

leads to a Stanford page indicating file not found. DocKrin (talk) 22:56, 8 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Strangely, the Stanford search engine thinks that's where it is too. I've added an Archive link. --Gwern (contribs) 19:35 13 February 2009 (GMT)

Norman Foster
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/05/norman-foster-dymaxion-buckminster-fuller

Tasty monster (=TS ) 12:21, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Lead too long
The article body is approximately 18,500 characters. Per lead section guidelines, the lead should be two or three paragraphs. It is too long because too much detail is given in the lead. In no case should it be necessary on this article for the lead to be more than five paragraph. The table of contents should be visible when browsing at the top of the page. Editors invested in the expansion of the lead section should not be attempting to own the article by removing justified maintenance tag. You don't think it needs to be fixed or don't want to fix it? Then leave the tag and let another editor address it. Skyerise (talk) 20:35, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Do us a all a favor and chill. I didn't just remove the tag.  I removed the tag and said come here and discuss the issue. We all know that the lead length is a guideline and not a rule.  Where one may see a rule infraction, others may see a proper lead.  We all know that a the lead must define the topic, establish context, explain why subject is notable -- and summarize the most important points, including the controversies.  Please rather than just slapping your maintenance tag on the article, read the article, and see if it is fact not summarizing the important points, establishing context and summarizing the the controversies in the article.  Your effort here seems to come from some rule-abiding sensibility -- where there is no rule, but rather are guidelines.  I say this because you haven't mentioned one thing that's actually in the lead that doesn't qualify... you seem rather to be automatically slapping a maintenance tag on the article.  You weren't discussing anything.  So.  Discuss what information in the length doesn't fit the idea of a working lead. I doubt you'll find any. Or have you even read the article? 842U (talk) 21:07, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * The lead is simply too long. Eventually someone will fix it. You chill. Skyerise (talk) 21:21, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Oh, and talking about me and making judgments about me is pointless and I won't further respond to comments with that kind of tone. You are not psychic. Remember, talk about the article, not the other contributors. I tag articles to remind myself to come back and fix something, with hopes someone else will first. Article tags are not an attack on the editor who created the situation, and shouldn't be viewed or respsonded to as such. Thanks. Skyerise (talk) 21:23, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

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4D car indeed!
The article says, "In 1930, Fuller had purchased an architectural magazine, T-Square, which he ultimately renamed Shelter.[17] Fuller edited the magazine anonymously for two years,[17] and in 1928 published sketches of his land-air-water vehicle, called a 4D Transport.[6] 4D stood for Four Dimensional,[18] a term used in physics and mathematics, referring to length, width, depth and time.[17]"

So he bought the magazine in 1930 in order to publish his sketches two years earlier. Presumably he lived the two years he edited the magazine with his time vector pointed in a direction opposite to everyone else's? IAmNitpicking (talk) 04:23, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't have access to the references. Anyone know the real date(s)? IAmNitpicking (talk) 13:21, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Alec Nevala-Lee biography
This article would benefit from incorporating the findings in Alec Nevala-Lee's new biography, which uses extensive archival sources to refute a lot of the myths surrounding Fuller. Many of the sources in this article are hagiographic texts that perpetuate fables that Fuller told about himself. I will try to correct a couple of things to begin, but it is a huge project. Nevala-Lee published a shorter article about the Dymaxion Car that you can read here: https://slate.com/technology/2022/08/the-dymaxion-car-the-true-history-of-buckminster-fullers-failed-automobile.html See also this excellent review of Nevala-Lee's biography by James Gleick: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2022/11/03/space-age-magus-buckminster-fuller/ Owunsch (talk) 13:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Bottom line...
Bottom line, it sounds like the Dymaxion made no real contributions to the advancement of automotive technology.

If it did, the article needs to do a better job of spelling out what the specific contributions were. 2601:281:D880:7880:6578:F5:AD44:7D68 (talk) 19:02, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That would be a fair summary. Whatever features it did demonstrate were either not useful (the handling was awful and crash survivability poor even for its era), or else they were better demonstrated by other vehicles such as a range of German (and Romanian) vehicles for aerodynamic efficiency or the Stout Scarab for the SUV-like cabin design. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2024 (UTC)