Don Banky's
Hydraulic Car
1955

Mechanix Illustrated May 1955

Inventor's Miracle Car May
Revolutionize Auto Industry

Will This
Hydraulic Car
Revolutionize
Motoring?

by Sam Schneider

Americas's future automobile
may be this hydraulically-
driven, 100-mile-per-gallon
vehicle, says its inventor.

Mechanix Illustrated May 1955, front cover

0N Nov 6, 1955, a boyishly slender resident of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will celebrate his 45th birthday. Around that time, too, America's auto buyers might posssibly be celebrating the fact that this stubbborn, forthright man wouldn't listen to high-domed engineers who scoffed - but went ahead and produced a car they said was impractical.

Some day the public may be riding around in the hydraulically-propelled auto invented by Daniel W. (Don) Banky, getting 100 miles per gallon with ease and cold-shouldering expensive motor over-hauls, repairs and upkeep.

If the foregoing sounds like the familiar fairy tale fed periodically to John Q. Driver, please don't flip the switch on us yet. It's true. This writer saw Banky's working model and drove it.

The photos on these pages show little, for they do not represent the likeness of any car. They merely show the raw skeleton Banky used in experiments with the hydraulic propulsive principle. This was his wheeled labratory on which he worked out his idea.

The completed car will look much like a conventional sports car, It will have an underslung chassis of aluminum tubing, surmounted by a three-seater, Fiberglas body. What is under the skin will be the big difference.

Banky's creation has no conventional radiator, transmission, clutch, or crankshaft. It eliminates some 8,000 parts pressently found in cars on the road. What, you may logically demand, does it run on?

Hydraulics - the science of fluid under motion - is the answer.

Hydraulic vehicles are not new of course. There is in operation at the pressent time a German bus with a hydraulic transmission system. Automotive engineers have long been aware of the possibility of using the principle to run automobiles. In fact, some experimental models of hydraulieally-operated cars have actually been built and drivn.

But Banky's design is probably the first attempt in this country to produce a practical hydraulic automobile to compete with gas-driven cars.

(click images for full story)