Jeff Lane in the completed Dymaxion replica. Photos courtesy Lane Motor Museum.
Though he had to put it on the backburner a few years ago, Jeff Lane never gave up on his Dymaxion replica project, and now that it’s finished, he plans to load a number of his friends in it and take it on a three-day, multi-state road trip to Florida.
“We just took it for a 40-mile trip today, and it’s kind of like driving a 20-foot-long forklift,” Lane said, referring to the front-wheel-drive, rear-steer configuration of the Dymaxion. “Though it’s really not all that bad now that we have a body on it—it’s really very quiet with the engine in the rear and doesn’t have as many vibrations as one would expect for a Thirties car.”
Lane, founder of the Lane Motor Museum and avowed fan of odd cars, began the replica project about nine years ago after his friend and Tatra enthusiast John Long suggested it. A year of research later, and Lane embarked on the project, deciding on a mix of elements from the three completed original Dymaxions: He’d take major body design from Dymaxion No. 1 and mount it to a chassis more like the one under Dymaxions No. 2 and No. 3.
He’d also make some significant upgrades from the original designs, substituting hydraulic brakes for the original cable brakes, and hydraulic steering for the original chain-and-cable setup, both in the name of safety. “There’s one documented case of the chain slipping from one of the originals, causing a crash,” Lane said. “And the original steering system required 35 turns lock to lock; this system requires only six.”
Otherwise, the replica hews pretty close to the originals. It uses the same complete 1933 Ford flathead drivetrain—though mounted backwards in the chassis—as the originals, as well as the same bare aluminum body. Lane even specified that it use non-opening windows and have no doors on the driver’s side, just like No. 1.
Once he had the design specs finalized, he had Pennsylvania chassis builders Bob Griffith and Chuck Savitske build from scratch the three-frame chassis, which they completed in the spring of 2008. Then in 2011, Lane shipped the bare chassis to the Czech Republic, where Mirko Hrazdira (the same craftsman who built Lane’s Leyat replicas) spent two years building the wood frame for the body. Once he finished building the body structure, Czech-based Tatra restorer ECORRA shaped and installed the aluminum body panels, wired the car, and installed the interior.
In the meantime, Lord Norman Foster of the United Kingdom commissioned Crosthwaite and Gardiner to build a replica of the long-lost Dymaxion No. 3, a deal that included the restoration of Dymaxion No. 2—the only original Dymaxion known to still exist—for the National Automobile Museum.
Lane’s completed, 3,400-pound replica arrived back at the Lane Motor Museum in early February, and Lane said it’s already been guaranteed a space in this year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance as a special display car. To get his replica to Amelia Island, Lane said he intends to forego the trailer and drive the Dymaxion the entire distance—a roughly 600-mile trip through Tennessee, Georgia and Florida that would normally take about nine hours. To get there, he plans on leaving March 11.
Until then, the Dymaxion replica will be on display at the museum, starting February 26. For more information, visit LaneMotorMuseum.org.
The Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place March 12-15. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.
