PM'S OWN SUBURBA-CAR is one way of providing that "missing link" in transporta-

tion. Two of the author's students at the Illinois Institute of Technology designed the
chassis, using a Honda motorcycle engine for power. The author then created this
model as a possible body design. If you have other notions about the way it should
look, see page 88 for instructions on entering PM's Suburba-Car design contest

84
PM
 ENNEDY EXPRESSWAY, Chi-
K cago's major suburban artery, has a
rush-hour name. It is called, by the natives
who use it, "America's longest parking
lot."
This is a pretty state of affairs—espe-
cially in the Land of Lincoln where loy-
alty to accomplishments and "things"
usually is so intense that it borders on
intramural nationalism.
Yet the sarcasm directed at this new
giant expressway, leaping across the
swarming midwestern megalopolis with ABOUT AS TINY as an enclosed vehicle can be,
this three-wheeler carries one person. All ve-
seven-league strides, reflects a burgeoning hicles shown here were designed by students at
problem in nearly every major American the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago
city. It is the price we are paying for the
four-wheeled dinosaur (often two or three)
in every garage. Each new car model year,
instead of solving the problem, compli-
cates it as cars grow longer, wider, more
powerful and unwieldly.
At present, the average car needs about
300 square feet of space—whereas the aver-
age person uses less than 100 square feet
for any given activity (shopping or din-
ing, for example). This means that three
times as much precious space must be
provided for parking and roads as for the
activity that leads a driver onto the high-
POWER CHAIR, propelled by 4-1/2hp four-cycle
ways in the first place. engine, was designed to be driven to station,
Aerial views of Los Angeles reveal that transported by rapid-transit train, then driven
to office. It occupies 15 square feet of space
no less than 70 percent of the city area
has been devoted to streets and parking.
Now, you are guessing that I am about
to make the dire forecast that the king-
size luxury car is doomed. Not so. There is
a place for the family bus—and, indeed, a
real need for it. But it is also becoming
perfectly clear that we must have smaller
cars.
There are three factors forcing us in
this direction. The first is our trend to
urbanization; population density continu-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jay Dob/in was director of the

Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, from
1955 to 1964, is now a professor there. He graduated
with honors from Pratt Institute in 1942, was with
Raymond Loewy Associates from 1942 to 7 955
FOUR-PASSENGER AUTO is powered by two-
cylinder Toyota engine with front-wheel drive.
Rear passengers face back and enter through
rear door. It's almost two feet shorter than a VW

NOV. 1965 85

SPARKY is an electrically powered urban runabout. It can go 30 mph—
and 60 miles on a charge. There are only three controls: an aircraft-type
steering yoke, accelerator and brake. The rear deck can carry 800 pounds
STUDENT'S EFFORTS have been concentrated on de-
signing small vehicles that will take up little space
but will still serve as adequate personal transpor-
ally goes up. Second, there are more cars
per capita. Over the last 30 years we have
progressed from one-car families to two-
car families, and there are now many
three-car families. We are fast approach-
ing the time when there may be one auto-
mobile for every adult. Third, there's the
rapid increase in population.
All this indicates the need for smaller
cars as an interim remedy to prevent the
breakdown of urban traffic.
There's just too great a gap between the
pedestrian and today's automobile. Ameri-
cans seem to regard anything beyond
three-eighths of a mile as too far to walk,
so they hop in the family juggernaut when
the urge to be somewhere else hits them.
(And it's ridiculous to see a 4000-pound,
300-hp vehicle moving a 100-pound house-
wife and a bag of groceries at 25 mph.)
Some of the sleekest small vehicles I've
seen are those designed by students at
the Institute of Design of Illinois Institute
of Technology.
86
? •«•
tation. Relationship of one student design to current
automobiles is illustrated in graph. At left is a 17-3/4
foot-long 1965 Chevrolet. In the center is the 13-1/3
One student, Louis Richards, attempting
to determine how tiny a personal vehicle
could be—how to "motorize a pedestrian,"
as he put it—built the Skeeter several
years back (see photo, page 87). In fact,
he built four of the vehicles, which rather
resemble the currently popular motorized
skateboards.
The various Skeeters ranged from a 12-
pound vehicle with a model airplane en-
gine that could propel a man 12 mph to an
18-pound machine with a half-hp engine
that would zip along at 20 mph.
Another student, Makato Kamegawa,
built a four-passenger car nearly two feet
shorter than the familiar Volkswagen. The
car is powered by a two-cylinder Toyota
engine and has front-wheel drive.
The two passengers in the rear enter
through a rear door and seat facing back-
wards. The rear seat folds up so that the
back of the car can be used to carry
freight.
Two other students designed the chassis
PM
SPARKY'S CAB opens like a clamshell for walk-in
entry. Rear deck has fold-down seat for extra pas-
sengers. The entire vehicle weighs 1000 pounds

SKEETER is a study in how tiny a personal vehicle

can be. Steered by leaning, it's powered by a half-
hp industrial engine. Top speed is 20 mph. Handle
of the 18-pound machine folds down for carrying

foot-long Volkswagen 1200. And at right is a 12-foot

car designed by a student at the Institute of Design
(also shown in the photo at bottom of page 85)

for the Suburba-Car, a neat little three-

wheeler that's great for buzzing off to the
store for groceries or for a commuter's lift
to the station. The designers, Alan Flow-
ers and Brian Skogler, powered the car
with a Honda motorcycle engine that
takes it up to 60 mph.
As for the body of this car, there are
dozens of ways to complete it. You can
try a version and enter it in PM's body
design contest (page 88). I completed one
version in miniature (page 84) that illus-
trates how the Suburba-Car could be
made into a sort of miniature station
wagon with a tailgate for loading gro-
ceries.
These small vehicles can be divided—•
rather simply—into two groups: those
with weather protection and those without.
Those without protection have the vir-
tue of being simple and inexpensive, but
CHARIOT steers by a handlebar that rotates 360
in the United States you might just as well degrees, giving reverse without gear change. The
suggest riding a horse. Bicycles, scooters small vehicle is capable of 25 mph speeds and can
(Please turn to page 254) be driven on rough surfaces because of large wheels

NOV. 1965 87
 Transportation's Missing Link
(Continued from page 67)
and the like simply do not appeal to com-
fort-loving Americans.
The lack of appeal is especially true in
major cities where there's a wide range
of temperature and there's much rain and
snow. As it happens, most of our large
cities fit this description.
In addition, the rider of the small ve-
hicle is intimidated by the behemoths that
share the road with him. The solution to
this problem is to have protected right-
of-ways separate from automobile traffic.
The eventual solution must be to separate
completely the cars from local pedestrian
and personal vehicle transportation. This
has been done in many cities of Europe
where there are three separate traffic
lanes: pedestrian, cycle and auto.
The ultimate answer to the urban
transportation problem—in terms of safe-
ty, economy, speed and land use—is to
have high-speed mass transit to carry the
very small personal vehicles that riders
use for short trips to and from terminals.
Already such plans are being proposed to
deal with the aggravating traffic problems
now upon us.
Several Institute of Design students
have tried their skill at designing vehicles
of this sort.
Sparky Is a Hitch Hiker
Sparky, for instance, is an electrically
powered runabout that's fitted with a
smoothly contoured aluminum body
(photos, pages 86-87). It can travel 30
mph, and goes 60 miles on one charge of
its batteries. Granted, it's a rather modest
performance compared to a gasoline-
powered car, but Sparky was conceived
as a systems car to be shipped at distances
over 25 miles by special high-speed rail
transportation.
Another piggyback people-carrier is
the Power Chair, which is simply a seat
on wheels (photo, page 85). It travels up
to 45 mph powered by a 4-1/2-hp four-
cycle engine.
After carrying a commuter to his train,
then being transported into the city, the
Power Chair could be driven to the of-
fice. Student Douglas Stout designed it.
But, even with all this thought going
into design of small cars, how do you get
Americans to accept them? We talk of
speed, comfort and safety when we defend
big cars, but it's primarily for the sym-
bolism that Americans want their cars to
be as big as possible.
Small cars seem to be less acceptable
to Americans because of a common fallacy
(Please turn to page 256)
254 PM
 Transportation's Missing Link
(Continued from page 254)

that they are cheap cars. There have been

a few small American cars that were well
made. The automobile is designed to cater
to the symbolic fantasies of prestige, opu-
lence, comfort, youth, speed and so on
held by the individual buyer. Designing
is done in utter disregard of the total
transportation system.
It is certainly not size nor weight that
makes for good performance. The most
roadworthy cars are the smaller ones.
Comfort is not a function of size.
Two big forces will change people's at-
titudes toward accepting innovations in
personal vehicles. The first is the steadily
increasing use of malls. Most new shop-
ping centers are being planned around
pedestrian areas; the automobile must be
left outside. Many major cities are pro-
posing mall plans for the downtown areas
in cities. This will change transportation
systems as these plans grow.
The second force is the rapid growth of
automobile rentals. All three major auto-
mobile manufacturers now have rental
plans. As the idea grows, it will undoubt-
edly break down the symbolism of the car
as a personal possession. The result
should open the whole subject of vehicle
design as applied to personal transporta-
tion.
Dismay or Delight
Whenever the vehicles built by the In-
stitute of Design students are shown, the
responses are both of dismay and delight.
Those who don't like the machines find
them crude and uncomfortable. Those
who find them interesting and fun, com-
pare them with sporting devices such as
surfboards, karts and skis; in short, the
fun is back in transportation.
Our transportation networks are very
crude. All the pressures of a fast-de-
veloping urban civilization will force
changes. Perhaps the vehicles shown on
these pages are a hint of the answer.

Fast Photos
A device used for making photographs
at the rate of 100 million frames a second
—about 10 times faster than any previous-
ly made for industrial studies—is in use
at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground.
It is used for recording shock and detona-
tion waves in the study of explosives.
These waves move at a velocity of 8090
meters a second, or roughly 18,000 miles
per hour. The ultra-high speeds are ob-
tained by using a framing grid and rotat-
ing mirror.
256 PM