Hemmings Motor News Blog Blog

Hemmings Motor News Blog

Hemmings Motor News has been around since 1954. We're proud of our heritage, but we're also more than the Hemmings full of classifieds that your father subscribed to. Aside from new editorial content every month in Hemmings, we have three monthly magazines: Hemmings Muscle Machines, Hemmings Classic Car and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

While our editors traverse the country to find the best content for those magazines, we find other oddities related to the old-car hobby that we really had no place for - until now. With this blog, we're giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we see and what we do during the course of putting out some of the finest automotive magazines you'll ever read.

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Your Legs are the Crumple Zone

Posted April 26, 2010 4:16 PM by dstrohl

Martin Carl Fischer was already a trained and accomplished watchmaker when the automobile became less of a tinkerer's delight and more of an actual conveyance. Yet as the size of the automobile quickly ballooned in the years following the turn of the century, requiring garages and other specially constructed accommodations, Fischer, like all good inventors, hit the sketchpad.

Envisioning a motor vehicle narrow enough to fit in a standard door, thus allowing it to be easily carried inside and even up flights of stairs, Fischer eliminated or simplified just about everything possible. The single-seat vehicle – on little more than a buckboard frame – used an air-cooled single-cylinder motorcycle engine and chain drive for motivation. Fischer also employed the driver's legs for steering the center-pivot front axle, thus freeing up the driver's hands, presumably with the primary purpose of allowing the driver to enjoy a cohiba while out scaring horses.

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Guru

Join Date: May 2007
Location: Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1084
Good Answers: 54
#1

Re: Your Legs are the Crumple Zone

04/27/2010 12:24 AM

Looks like a go-cart I built as a kid. Will I have to pay royalties?

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Guru
Hobbies - DIY Welding - New Member

Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 1601
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#2
In reply to #1

Re: Your Legs are the Crumple Zone

04/27/2010 7:29 AM

You need not pay royalties is because the patent has expired, and it was busted by none other than Henry Ford. If you want the whole story, read a charming book by Hiram Percy Maxim "Horseless Carriage Days". Make sure you read the 1st or 2nd edition. Some facts have been deleted in subsequent editions.

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Guru

Join Date: May 2007
Location: Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1084
Good Answers: 54
#3
In reply to #2

Re: Your Legs are the Crumple Zone

04/27/2010 6:58 PM

Thanks, it sounds interesting. I'll chase it up.

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