This avoids the conductive floor/ceiling of the traditional bumper car setup, allowing the SeaPlex venue to be convertible from a bumper-car ride to a multipurpose gym (basketball court).

[6] In the early 1920s, a patent was granted to Max Stoehrer and his son Harold for an "Amusement Apparatus" which became the basis for their Dodgem cars.

They deliberately equipped their device with "novel instrumentalities to render their manipulation and control difficult and uncertain by the occupant-operator.” They asserted that “in the hands of an unskilled operator," a "plurality of independently manipulated... cars" would “follow a promiscuous, irregular, and undefined path over the floor or other area, to not only produce various sensations during the travel of the vehicle but to collide with other cars as well as with portions of the platform provided for that purpose.

After getting permission from Chevrolet, then subsequently buying the actual Corvette chevrons from local Philadelphia dealers, those were attached to the nose of their product for 1959.

In the mid-1960s, Disneyland introduced hovercraft-based bumper cars called Flying Saucers, which worked on the same principle as an air hockey game; however, the ride was a mechanical failure and closed after a few years.