Fuller described the Dymaxion as a "zoomobile", explaining that it could hop off the road at will, fly about, then, as deftly as a bird, settle back into a place in traffic.

The Dymaxion car was designed by American inventor Buckminster Fuller during the Great Depression and featured prominently at Chicago's 1933/1934 World's Fair.

[1] Fuller built three experimental prototypes with naval architect Starling Burgess – using donated money as well as a family inheritance[2][3] – to explore not an automobile per se, but the 'ground-taxiing phase' of a vehicle that might one day be designed to fly, land and drive – an "Omni-Medium Transport".

[6] The Dymaxion's aerodynamic bodywork was designed for increased fuel efficiency and top speed, and its platform featured a lightweight hinged chassis, rear-mounted V8 engine, front-wheel drive (a rare RF layout), and three wheels.

In 2008, The New York Times said Fuller "saw the Dymaxion, as he saw much of the world, as a kind of provisional prototype, a mere sketch, of the glorious, eventual future.

[18] Regarding the 4D transport, author Lloyd S. Sieden, wrote in his 2000 book Bucky Fuller's Universe: With such a vehicle at our disposal, [Fuller] felt that human travel, like that of birds, would no longer be confined to airports, roads, and other bureaucratic boundaries, and that autonomous free-thinking human beings could live and prosper wherever they chose.

[9][page needed]To his daughter, Allegra, he described the Dymaxion as: A "zoomobile", explaining that it could hop off the road at will, fly about, then, as deftly as a bird, settle back into a place in traffic.

[9][page needed] On March 4, 1933 – as President Roosevelt instituted a banking moratorium, Fuller formed Dymaxion Corporation, set up a workshop in the former dynamometer building of the defunct Locomobile Company at Tongue Point, on the west side of the harbor in Bridgeport, Connecticut,[16] and hired naval architect Starling Burgess and a team of 27 workmen, including former Rolls-Royce mechanics.

[21] Because Fuller was aiming for what he called Omni Medium Transport, a vehicle that could go anywhere,[9][page needed] the Dymaxion would ultimately have "wheels for ground travel and jet stilts for instant takeoff and flight.

[9][page needed] Fuller theorized that getting a long, aerodynamic 'plane' fuselage – which was also inclined to have trailing, rear steering – to land safely and not immediately turn into the wind, would be a major challenge.

[9][24] Fuller had worked with sculptor Isamu Noguchi to create plaster wind tunnel models of the Dymaxion to help determine its teardrop shape.

Authors of a 2011 detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis at Coventry University of the Dymaxion bodywork noted the form's "similarity in shape to a humpback whale" and concluded "the Dymaxion car looks close to a drag optimum style and serves as a useful reference for low drag forms.

[9][page needed] A highly publicized[16] crash in Prototype One on October 27, 1933, occurred "virtually at the entrance to the Chicago Century of Progress World's Fair.

"[29] The Dymaxion rolled over during the crash, killing its driver, Gulf employee Francis T. Turner, and seriously injuring its passengers: aviation pioneer (and noted spy) William Sempill and Charles Dollfuss, curator of France's first air museum.

Walter Chrysler was interested, although he advised Fuller that such an advanced design would meet considerable resistance,[9][page needed] and would make every used car on the road obsolete, threatening the wholesale dealer distribution and finance network.