Have you heard of Dale? This is a three-wheeled automotive prototype produced during the U.S. oil crisis in the early 1970s. Sadly, it never reached the market because it was accused of being a scam.
The history of the Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation, an American ‘automaker’ begun by Geraldine Elizabeth "Liz" Carmichael in 1974, became one of the strangest stories in American automotive history.
Elaine Chung
Geraldine Elizabeth “Liz” Carmichael didn’t want to just create a new car she wanted to change the world; be the next Henry Ford; the first woman to disrupt the automobile industry. Her audacious plan to market a cheap, futuristic-looking, fuel-efficient, three-wheeled car is the subject of the new HBO documentary
The Lady and the Dale. Carmichael claimed her background was in engineering but it was her showmanship and public relations prowess which really set the Dale apart. She sat for interviews with
Newsweek and
People,
telling the latter, “They thought Henry Ford was crazy. I’ll show them. I’m going to rule the auto industry like a queen.”