Retrofuture.comHere’s a video I put together of various news clips and other archival space age footage with music by Deodata (Also Sprach Zarathustra) and David Bowie (Starman). Scenes include a GM Futurama in late 1950s, the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, the Whirlpool Space Kitchen, “1999,” a corporate vision of the future made by Ford-Philco in 1970, a (insert plug here) Space Food Sticks commercial, the Braniff Airlines’ “Air Strip” TV ads, and lots more.
Right after 9/11, I was interviewed by Fox News for a new story on flying cars. “Perish the thought of bin Laden in a Skycar,” I was quoted as saying (I do not remember saying this). My opinion on flying cars is not popular with devotees but I stand by the basic argument–is there any persuasive reason these two forms of transportation need to be merged when each technology works perfectly well on its own?
The latest flying car to get some media buzz is the Terrafugia Transition. It looks absolutely whiz-bang but I noticed it is being promoted as a sports aviation vehicle, a far cry from the futuristic fantasies of the past. Perhaps we’ve downsized our flying car dreams.
Here’s the original Retrofuture article I wrote back in 1999:
Like so many other stories profiled in the Retro Future, the ConvAIRCAR flying car was a noble but doomed attempt to push the boundaries of what is possible.
On paper, the ConvAIRCAR was truly the stuff of commuters’ fantasies. It had “all the advantages of a Cadillac” according to its manufacturer. So what happened? The same thing that happens to all flying cars–the dream crashed and burned before it could take off…this time literally.
The ConvAIRCAR was not the first flying car to make it to the drawing board. That honor goes to the Curtiss Autoplane of 1917. But public interest in a car-plane hybrid didn’t take hold until after World War II. Airplane manufacturers, after the war, were shifting away from military aircraft to consumer production lines.
The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Company of San Diego, California was one of those companies looking for a new outlet to sell their aircraft. Sensing the time was right for a flying car, they poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into developing a prototype built by aerodynamic engineer Theodore P. Hall.
Also lending a hand was Henry Dreyfuss, one of the outstanding industrial designers of the 20th century. Dreyfuss designed telephones for Bell, tractors for John Deere, thermostats for Honeywell, and cameras for Polaroid. But a flying car? What motivated the famously no-nonsense Dreyfuss–a devotee of Louis Sullivan’s dictum that “form follows function”–to lend his talents to such a far-fetched endeavor? The cynic would say money; but, in truth, a flying car didn’t seem that far-fetched at the time.
“The market for this flying automobile will be far greater than a conventional light plane,” Consolidated Vultee promised, “because the purchasers can obtain daily use from the car to get more out of his investment.” The estimated cost: $1,500. Flight attachments were an additional cost.
These attachments were integral to the ConvAIRCAR’s design. After driving to the airport, an owner had to connect a flight unit (which included a propeller) to take off. At the next airport they simply removed the detachable wings and drove away in what was an otherwise ordinary car.
Well, not exactly ordinary. Thanks to a “plastic-impregnated” fiberglass body that weighed only 725 pounds, the ConvAIRCAR achieved an astounding 45 miles per gallon. And it looked great–the aerodynamic envelope of “the only automobile that flies” was a remarkable achievement, truly years ahead of its time.
On November 17, 1947, the New York Times announced the news: a prototype of the ConvAIRCAR had circled San Diego for one hour and 18 minutes. These trials confirmed the best hopes of Consolidate Vultee. But success was short-lived. A few days after the test flight, a pilot crash-landed the ConvAIRCAR in the desert (it was later discovered a gas gauge had accidentally been shut off) and the only prototype in existence was demolished beyond repair.
Eventually another model of the ConvAIRCAR was built but the damage was done. The high cost of production and the limited market potential–not to mention the negative publicity–spelled doom (sadly no examples of the ConvAIRCAR survive; the second prototype perished in a fire at the San Diego Air & Space Museum).
The failure of the ConvAIRCAR was not unique. Dozens of inventors and aerodynamic engineers have tried to create similar vehicles in the last fifty years–none has successfully marketed a flying car. According to a 1989 article in Smithsonian, over 30 patents for flying cars have been filed this century in the United States alone; usually boasting fanciful names like Aerocar, Autoplane, Airphibian, and Skycar.
To this day several obstacles stand in the path of launching a successful flying car. First, the FAA is not likely to grant airspace to these vehicles–congestion in the air is bad enough. Secondly, flying cars, traditionally, have suffered from an engineering problem: as cars they are overpowered, as planes they are underpowered. And, last, the insurance is certain to be prohibitively expensive.
No, sadly, you will not be able to jump into a flying car for a quick trip 
to the 7-11 in the year 2000. But as long as “The Jetsons” is still running on the Cartoon Network, these dream machines will undoubtedly live on.
I finally had a chance to see a prototype Dymaxion car last year at a Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was impressive to behold. Here’s an original piece I wrote in 1999. If ever there was a hero of the Retrofuture, it would have to be Bucky.
If R. Buckminster Fuller had been pulling the strings of corporate America, it’s possible we would be living in a world of three-wheel cars, aluminum houses, and domed cities.Fuller never enjoyed that kind of power or authority. In fact, a good deal of his 24 patents and many other improbable schemes came to nothing. But Bucky—as he was universally known—was destined to be ahead of his time.
Born in Massachusetts in 1895, Bucky was a maverick thinker who spent much of his life on a personal crusade to improve the human condition. “Think about it,” he once explained, “we are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all, to feed everybody, clothe everybody, give every human on Earth a chance. We now know what we could never have known before–that we now have an option for all humanity to ‘make it’ successfully on this planet and in this lifetime.”
Bucky’s agenda was to do more with less. He wanted to do it in a Dymaxion—or DYnamic MAXimum ION—world. That sounded futuristic but the term Dymaxion actually meant nothing. It had been coined in 1929 by a department store’s publicity agent to describe an in-store display of Bucky’s new 4D House. To give the house a more “mainstream” name, the PR man invented the term Dymaxion, which became a trademark associated with some of Bucky’s most imaginative projects.
The 4D Dymaxion House not only sounded futuristic, it was futuristic. The ingenious design—which revolved around a central “mast” that contained plumbing and other essentials—challenged nearly every theory about housing construction. It also proved to be Bucky’s ticket to fame. The public was enraptured, historian Joseph J. Corn explains in “Yesterday’s Tomorrows.” “Fuller’s Dymaxion House,” writes Corn, “brought the concept of the home of tomorrow to the forefront of the popular and professional consciousness.”
The key issues addressed by Bucky’s “house of the future” were important questions of self-sustainability, mass-production, pre-fabrication, and automation.
Another component was mobility–the 4D Dymaxion was literally a mobile home, light enough to be transported by dirigible. Utilizing aluminum as his main material, Bucky assured the house would be lightweight, waterproof, fireproof and cheap.
It may have seemed brilliant, but the 4D Dymaxion House never did fly. Several prototypes were produced but nothing on the scale that Bucky had imagined. Only the Dymaxion Bathroom–a sheet-metal stamped curiosity—managed to sell a few units in a limited production. The biggest problem, besides a few technical issues, were the banks, who refused to loan money for the project. This was a pattern which appeared throughout Bucky’s career, but it never slowed his productivity.
In 1933, Bucky dedicated himself to building the Dymaxion car, a three-wheeled automobile which allowed a driver to make a 360 degree turn on a dime. Modeled after the rudder on a ship, the rearwheel steering mechanism gave a driver an amazing amount of maneuverability. It was possible to move sideways into a parking spot if necessary. And if extra visibility was needed, a periscope came out of the roof for some added perspective.
Only three Dymaxion cars were ever produced. One of them was purchased by famed orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski. Another person willing to invest money was Amelia Earhart. But financial constraints forced Bucky to curtail his plans. Once again, obstacles stood in his path. One of these problems was completely unforeseen: the car caused a traffic jam wherever it went. In the book “Bucky Works,” author J. Baldwin explains how Bucky’s teardrop-shaped aluminum automobile had people dropping their jaws in amazement. He describes a drive up New York streets by Bucky “which gridlocked a significant portion of midtown Manhattan. Excluded from the annual auto show at Madison Square Garden, Bucky parked his car near the street entrance, effectively upstaging Detroit’s finest.”
But any lingering hope the Dymaxion might go into full-scale production was dashed when the car was involved in a fatal accident at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The car’s design was later exonerated but the negative publicity proved fatal.The Dymaxion name must have seemed cursed to everybody except Bucky because he was already busy at work on Dymaxion World Map. Using his self-taught skills as a cartographer, Bucky had fashioned a unique “flat” view of Earth which demonstrated how the geometry of geodesic–or curved–surfaces provided navigators with the most efficient routes of voyages on the open seas.
This intellectual exercise played a crucial role in Bucky’s most famous creation: the geodesic dome. The map strengthened Bucky’s resolve that geodesic lines—the shortest line between two points that lies on a given surface—were the most efficient way of enclosing space. After experimenting with a pattern of tetrahedrons (triangular pyramids), Bucky discovered he could create a dome whose structural integrity was extraordinary but which was also incredibly light.
It was also incredibly striking. The geodesic dome became an instantly recognizable icon. Probably the most famous Bucky dome was the landmark created at the Expo ’67 fair in Montreal. It has been estimated that 200,000 geodesic domes have been created since Bucky’s breakthrough, which means his buildings occupy more space than any other living architect.
The phenomenon of geodesic domes elevated Bucky’s status and he became, in his elder years, a familiar face on college campuses, an animated figure talking in a rapid clip to spellbound audiences. Some saw “the planet’s friendly genius” as slightly eccentric; others were enthralled.
Bucky provided an inspirational message for beginners; after all, he proved that a self-taught architect, engineer, philosopher, map-maker, car-builder, and house-designer could, with a lot of perseverance, become a celebrated figure who won 47 honorary doctorates. That’s right, we forgot to tell you: Bucky never earned a college degree.
“In the year 2000,” Bucky once predicted, “mankind will either have destroyed itself or used its brain in a very big way.” Like everything about Buckminster Fuller, the accuracy of this observation remains to be judged–perhaps, in the 21st Century. At a particular gleeful moment Bucky once declared “I have discovered the coordinates of the Universe” and who are we to doubt him? Everywhere you look, Bucky lives.
Dream cars come and dream cars go but Harley Earl’s Firebird III lives on. This is another Retrofuture original from 1999.
In the recent hit film Minority Report, Tom Cruise drives a nifty Lexus sports car designed by conceptual artist Herald Belker. Belker’s dream machine is making a splash on the car show circuit but, for all its sleek zoomy-ness, its technological achievements don’t hold a candle to the original retro-rocket: Harley Earl’s Firebird III.
With seven aerodynamic fins and a double-canopy cockpit, the Firebird III was 1958′s “car of the future.” Over four decades later, the car’sconceptual underpinnings are still radically ahead-of-their-time.
The Firebird III was chock full of space-age innovations: special drag brakes which emerged from flat panels to slow the car at high speeds, an “ultra-sonic” key which signaled the body panel (i.e., the doors) to swing open, an automated guidance system to avoid accidents and “no hold” steering.
Created under the auspices of Harley Earl (pictured left), the Firebird prototypes represented the pinnacle of automotive styling during the golden age of General Motors.
Earl was greatly influenced by the advances in aerospace engineering. The so-called “father of the tail fin” was convinced the future of car design must incorporate aerodynamic principles. Dazzled by Lockheed’s cutting-edge P-38 (below), Earl assembled a group of go-for-broke engineers and mandated they conjure up something spectacular.
One of these prototypes, the Firebird III, was the apotheosis of the concept car. With its sleek projectile appearance, the Firebird III pushed the outer limits of what was then possible.
Designed by a team that included Bob McLean (who later worked on the infamous DeLorean), Norm James, and Bill Porter, the revved-up Bat-like car conveyed an unrivalled sense of speed.
Underneath the hood there were some truly revolutionary ideas. One was Unicontrol, a mouse-like instrument which substituted for steering-wheel, transmission, throttle and brake (shifting it left turned the car left, shifting it right turned the car right, back applied the brakes and forward put the car into reverse).
Another innovation was “Autoglide,” an automated guidance system which took in the event of human error. In theory (it was never actually constructed) a low frequency-powered cable underneath “highways of the future” provided remote guidance; using antennas to sense signals, the Firebird III’s position on the highway could be programmed to avoid accidents.
Just in case there was one last safety measure: a TV camera mounted on the rear of the Firebird III transmitted live pictures to small screens visible to the driver.
Before utility won the day, Harley Earl created a new frontier in aerodynamic car design. This aesthetic, reawakened, shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. These days, even your pedestrian grocery-getter sports some kind of whoosh. They all owe a debt to Earl.
Nothing says Retrofuture more than the age-old dream of launching a flying car. The latest project to create a media buzz is being developed by former NASA engineers based in Massachusetts.
The Terrafugia Transition (a mouthful of a name it is) uses a tank of everyday unleaded fuel and, thanks to its fold-up wings, fits neatly into a typical suburban garage.
To combine an airplane and a car has been the dream of engineers for almost a century. These Jetson-like fantasy vehicles present engineering issues as well as FAA airspace obstacles. But if you’re a believer and you’re ready to buy into the dream this nifty looking “roadable light sport aircraft” is yours for the nice round sum of $200,000.
Terrafugia claims that twenty have been pre-ordered already. They hope to have the Transition out in 2010.
