Reconstructing Bucky's Dymaxion Car

Architect Norman Foster, who worked with Buckminster Fuller towards the end of his life, recently rebuilt Fuller's Dymaxion Car to exacting specifications. Metropolis Magazine interviewed Foster about what we can still learn from the Dymaxion design.

1 minute read

March 21, 2011, 11:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Foster explains that at the time Fuller was designing the Dymaxion car, he was friends with Henry Ford and was able to get a deal on Ford parts, so the car is really a rearranging of early Ford models:

"But the Dymaxion was three times the volume. It had the potential of taking up to eleven rather than four. It was significantly faster, and consumed half the fuel. It was truly doing more with less."

So why rebuild the car today?

"First of all, the maxim of doing more with less is more urgent and imperative today than it's ever been. In a way the Dymaxion was the classic people-mover before its time."

Friday, March 18, 2011 in Metropolis Magazine

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