AUTOMOBILIA HARD CHARGERS
THE ROCK ’EM, SOCK ’EM WORLD OF BUMPER CARS CARL BOMSTEAD
Before texting, computer games and the Internet, a day at any amusement park was a real treat. Parks like Cedar Point or Great America in the Midwest and Playland and Jantzen Beach in the Northwest were favorites. Their rides and cotton candy made any birthday or other significant occasion memo- rable. The longest lines, however, were always for the bumper cars.
The patent for the first bumper, or “Dodgem,” car was issued in March 1921 to Max Stoehrer and his son Harold. The rear steering devices were self-propelled and, according to the patent, they were “equipped with novel instrumentalities to render their manipulation and control difficult and uncertain by the occupant-operator in order to provide an amusement device.” In other words, as detailed in a test by Scientific American, they were “highly unmanageable” and “the steering is only relative.” Even Dod- gem admitted that “you go some- where, but you don’t go where you intend going.” They were an immedi- ate success, as people liked smacking and banging into one another, and the Stoehrers were soon selling every Dodgem car they could produce.
A pole at the rear of the car carried the electricity between the charged chick- en wire ceiling and tin floor, and the current would run an electromagnetic motor propelling it along. To keep the riders in the cars they were told that they would get electrocuted if they stepped on the floor. When the opera- tors were asked why they didn’t get
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electrocuted when they walked out to assist a stalled car, riders were told that they wore special porcelain insulators in their shoes!
The first Dodgem ride opened in
Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts, and it operated from 1921 until 1980. Other sites quickly followed and Dodgem became the amusement ride of choice. A 1927 company brochure listed 136 amusement parks in the U.S. with Dodgem rides.
Their popularity attracted the attention of the Lusse cousins, who operated a machine shop in Philadelphia. They took the Dodgem design one step further; they realized that not only did
The first Dodgem ride opened in Salisbury Beach, Massa- chusetts, and it operated from 1921 until 1980. Other sites quickly followed and Dodgem became the amusement ride of choice.
people want to collide with someone, they wanted to choose with whom they collided. Their design allowed the op- erator to drive the Auto-Skooter in the direction intended, but it could also go backward as quickly as it went forward.
Both companies prospered, and Dod- gem claimed that a 10-car ride would pay for the cars and the building in the first year. In a 1926 brochure, one operator stated, “What I like is that the Dodgem Junior attracts the crowds and no ordinary person can watch someone else having fun without try- ing it themselves, and once they try it they are regular patrons for life.” In the 1930s, some operators claimed that when the rink was full, it cost less than a couple cents per car to operate. With a gross of $25,000–$28,000 in a typical 18-week season, these Depres- sion-era rides were profitable indeed.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, amuse- ment parks adapted art deco aesthetics, with bold curves and streamlining, and bumper cars followed, with stylized bodies that were very car-like. By the mid-1930s, they were painted in bold colors and included a hood ornament on a large polished cast aluminum
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
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