A bit ago I wrote about high-performance carbon, the tuner culture and how carbon could change how cars are being made.

As a big fan of the eccentric & genius Buckminster Fuller I was intrigued by the idea of buckypaper in an article about how this new material could change the way that cars, airplanes and more could be revolutionized. Buckypaper is described as “10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite”.

This train of thought ( and a conversation with a friend) lead me to the Airstream of my dreams by good ol’ Bucky: the Dynomax.

Buckypaper is not just a tribute to the great designer, Buckminster Fuller.
It is actually referential to buckminsterfullerene (an alltrope…you don’t really want a science lesson today, do you?).

Point is, designing a car that isn’t based on a combustion engine is one thing. The entire floor and structure will change- and can be changed- and that changes the way the designers aesthetically address the shape of cars. Those hybrids,though, are based on structures that are made of traditional materials that are heavy and enable protective qualities to the entire unit.
They are just a traditional car where the engine, like interstitial windshield wipers, have been tweaked. They are only half of the new product.

A new exterior concept combined with a re-designed drive train (that includes alternative energy concepts, ya’ll) would really give new definition to environmentally friendly autos.

What carbon, better yet, Buckypaper does is change the way the entire production line functions, how balance, stance, speed, efficiencies and aesthetics are addressed. This is the place that science and design will really make a marked change in the way that we perceive automobile design.

Just take the Dynomax: it was so sleekly designed that Bucky Fuller claimed it would go 120 mph easily but there is no documentation that it ever went over 90 miles an hour without the rear end lifting off the ground.In this case Bucky was just using a stock Ford V-8 engine with a (oh those dreamer artists!) new
exterior- half of a new product.

Interestingly the name of the engineer, brilliant as he may be, who developed the hybrid engine that’s being replicated over and over again by all of the manufacturers, is not rolling off the tip of the tongue of neither gear heads nor the consumers. It will be that perfect combination of designer and engineer and artist that will change the way we perceive cars forever.

Originally posted here