1937 Airomobile Three-Wheeler

Looking more fish-like than bird-like, the 1937 Airomobile was an engineering marvel that could have been the American equivalent of the Volkswagen Beetle. Instead it went down in history as a largely forgotten one-off prototype.

This intriguing automobile was the brainchild of Paul M. Lewis, who first drew up the sketches for a simple, inexpensive (he was aiming in the $300 price range) and safe automobile in 1934. The three-wheel design met his needs for streamlining, and was also quite stable. A firm proponent of the three-wheel design, Lewis touted the fact that a three-wheeler's frame would be subjected to far less torsional forces over rough roads and terrain than would a traditional four-wheel frame design.

A year after inking the basic design, Lewis incorporated as Lewis-American Airways and offered stock in the company. He then selected Carl Doman and Ed Marks, former engineers with the Franklin Automobile company, who had formed the Doman-Marks Engine Company, to design and build the car. Though the Airomobile would never progress past the prototype stage, the engine that Doman-Marks designed for it, a horizontally-opposed, overhead-valve, air-cooled four-cylinder would later find its way into a variety of light planes, with six-cylinder versions appearing in a variety of truck lines. Though Doman-Marks wasn't completely sold on the three-wheel theme, they honored Lewis' vision and built it according to his initial specifications, though alternative arrangement studies were considered which included rear-mounted engines on four-wheel platforms.

The front-drive, front-engine configuration created packaging problems and required constant velocity joints of Citroen design to be used, after being modified by Spicer. After most of the packaging issues were settled and the frame and body were completed, Doman-Marks presented the car to Lewis, though extensive troubleshooting remained to be done. Steering, suspension and shifting were problematic, but after working out all the bugs, in April 1937 the Airomobile was officially given over to Lewis. All told, he'd spent the heady sum of $25,000 having the vehicle built.

Lewis set off on a cross-country promotional tour with the Airomobile, logging some 45,000 miles in only a few short months. Along the way, he managed to convince numerous interested parties in his vision of an affordable, safe automobile for all Americans. In the Jan./Feb. 1971 issue of Special Interest Automobiles magazine, Lewis is quoted as stating that "The Airomobile was carefully engineered to turn corners very fast. Even faster than possible with a 4-wheel car, rear-wheel driven. To accomplish this, we needed to build the Airomobile with a very low center of gravity. The engine was mounted forward of the front wheels and the passengers rode, therefore, on the long end of the teeter-totter. This made for a very easy ride."

"When we would take a prospective dealer for a ride we very often came across dips in the street. We would say to out prospective dealer, 'Now hold onto your hat and don't stand up!' He, of course, expected to be bounced to the roof of the car. But such was not the case. The weight up front, when it went down, could not go up so quickly because, by the time the rear wheel dropped down, and when the engine would want to go up, the effect was to hold the long end of the teeter-totter down. So there was no pitching up and down," Lewis added.

Lewis went on to say that, "in driving the Airomobile over so many states, we often told interested dealers that the cars they were selling couldn't follow the Airomobile for one mile without damaging their driving mechanism. To demonstrate this, we would drive off the road and over a ditch, into a plowed field or meadow, back into the ditch and onto the road, never twisting the body or slowing down. This made believers out of man. And because the Airomobile would take corners and sharp curves so much faster than other cars, we were able to establish dealers over many states."

So what became of Lewis' vision? Like many idealists who were involved in the automotive industry in the immediate prewar years, the war disrupted any plans for mass production. Some changes were made to the front-end design of the Airomobile, it initially had a tall, thin slatted grille on a pointed nose with bullet-style headlights atop each fender. This configuration was changed in 1938 for the nose the car appears with in these photos.

Though the first cross-country tour ad been promising, a second tour after the 1938 redesign yielded fewer prospects and the project withered for lack of financial backing. About this time, Doman-Marks was purchased by Republic Aircraft Corporation, becoming Air-Cooled Motors. Following the war, Air-Cooled was bought by Preston Tucker, and its opposed engine line continued in production. What's interesting to note is that in 1937, Porsche studied the Airomobile's flat-four/transaxle layout, and a remarkably similar design quickly appeared in the Volkswagen Beetle and remained the popular little Bug's powerplant configuration throughout its long life.

To purchase a reprint of the more extensive article from which this Oddies But Goodies was excerpted, "1937 Airomobile America's Almost VW", Special Interest Autos magazine Jan./Feb. 1971, call 1-800-447-9550 or click here.

1937 Airomobile Specifications:
Weight: 2,200 pounds
Wheelbase: 126 inches
Height: 65.3 inches
Width: 71.5 inches
Track Front/Rear: 62.0/0 inches
Length: 180 inches
Frame: Unitized body/frame with square-tube lower-perimeter frame, removable front sub-assembly.
Body: All steel
Suspension, front: Independent full-floating, single lower control arms, coil springs with tubular hydraulic shocks.
Suspension, rear: Single rear wheel mounted on trailing arm with longitudinal elliptic leaf spring and hydraulic shock
Steering: Worm and roller, 3.75 turns lock-to-lock
Brakes: Two-wheel hydraulic drum (front only)
Engine: Horizontally opposed 129-cu.in. four-cylinder, air-cooled, cast-iron crankcase, finned aluminum cylinders with cast-iron liners, 6.5:1 compression ratio.
Output: 57 hp @ 3700 rpm
Transmission: Three-speed manual transaxle