The importance of versatile, robust fuel tanks with pressure relief valve systems has existed for as long as volatile chemicals have been transported, but a turning point for their use in fuel and biofuel can be traced to the 1970s.
The Oil Crisis was a dramatic turning point, as a significant shortage and spiking price of crude oil meant that entire industries needed to change and adapt extraordinarily quickly.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the motoring industry, and huge amounts of time, energy and resources were spent on finding alternative fuels, with Brazil’s national biofuel programme one of the most famous, innovative and successful.
With other technologies such as electric cars in their relative infancy, the simplest and most common solution was to make cars smaller, and one new car company seemed to be at the forefront of a revolution that never came to be.
The Malaise Era And The Twentieth Century
The Twentieth Century Motor Car Company, named after a fictional company in the book Atlas Shrugged, was one of many new car companies formed in the United States that believed that they had the answer to the malaise felt in the US car industry.
Whilst nearly every country was affected in one way or another by the Oil Crisis, countries in Continental Europe, as well as the United Kingdom and Japan, answered the problem by buying smaller cars and prioritising fuel economy.
This led to the soaring popularity of hatchback cars such as the Renault 5, Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Golf, but it was accelerated by the oil crisis and the fuel shortages that resulted.
By contrast, the United States car market was focused on large, thirsty cars that almost immediately became too expensive to run, creating an immediate need for smaller cars.
Whilst most of this was served by Japanese imports such as the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla, Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael saw the potential for a small, economical car that could be sold cheaply and use tiny amounts of fuel compared to the norm.
The Widow And The Dale
The story of Liz Carmichael was that she was a farm girl from Indiana who managed to get a degree in engineering and marry a NASA scientist named Jim, before he died in mysterious (later found to be fictitious) circumstances in 1966, leaving her as a single parent of five.
In 1973, she met Dale Clift, who had created his own lightweight three-wheeled car from kit car components and a two-cylinder engine from a Honda motorcycle.
She convinced him to sell the rights to her in exchange for $1001 upfront, a $2000 cheque (which later bounced) and a promise of $3m in royalties once it reached full production.
Under her marketing, the Twentieth Century Dale was claimed to have fuel efficiency vastly in advance of the norms of the era; during a time when the average fuel consumption was 13 miles per US gallon, the Dale claimed over 70 mpg, thanks to a modified 40 bhp BMW engine that could deliver a top speed of 85mph.
The three-wheeler looked sleek, was lightweight, showed a lot of promise and with prices that started at just $2000, the Dale appeared to be everything the American motorist needed at that point, with Ms Carmichael’s tireless sales energy and tragic story generating a lot of attention.
Unfortunately, this attention would create a wave of momentum that ultimately knocked down the house of cards that was the Twentieth Century company.
Did The Dale Ever Exist?
Dale Clift’s original prototype existed, as did several prototype designs, one of which would famously be shown as a prize on The Price Is Right. However, the dark secret behind the Dale is that it was built on a collection of lies that eventually started to get noticed.
The first issue was at the 1975 Los Angeles Auto Show, where Ms Carmichael claimed they would start ramping up production by June, which seemed extremely difficult since Twentieth Century did not have a license to produce or sell cars, nor did it have a permit to sell stock in itself.
What made this worse was that the company’s PR director, William Miller, was alleged to have connections to organised crime, something that was not helped by his murder in January 1975.
She went into hiding not long after, when it turned out that there was no car and no mass-production equipment. She was arrested, escaped, went into hiding again and was finally imprisoned in 1989 following an appearance on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries.
The potential of the Dale was considerable, and whilst the yellow three-wheeler was ultimately not the future of motoring, it signposted an era of small, fuel-efficient cars using clever engineering and pressure relief systems.
