Eliot Cricket III

In the early decades of auto manufacturing, companies like Ford and General Motors regularly purchased patents from backyard tinkerers and independent inventors. Inventors regularly offered new designs for everything from improved gas gauges to attaching tents to cars for autocamping. Instead of improving one detail of the car, inventor Samuel Eliot reimagined the entire automobile.

While toyish in appearance, the “Cricket III” is indicative of a period of innovation, vision and style of pre-space age technology. It combines a number of features that Eliot had likely hoped would revolutionize automotive design. It features a stainless steel body, torsion bar springing, a one-piece frame, and overhead steerable lighting. Unlike a traditional steering wheel, Eliot created a control stick more reminiscent of flying an airplane. Turning is accomplished by pushing the stick left or right. Instead of a brake pedal, the driver slows down by pushing the stick forward.

Eliot tried to market the Cricket and his ideas in automotive magazines throughout the 1930s. He even began calling it the “New Era Safety Car” to promote it. While big manufacturers acquired ideas from inventors like Eliot, no one was interested in Eliot’s vision of the future.

Despite this setback, Eliot was more successful in other areas of the auto industry. He served a term as president of the American Society of Automotive Engineers (A.S.A.E.). Eliot held numerous auto related patents, including for the American Universal Motor – an engine that would run on any fuel, and even steam. He was also responsible for Boston’s first “cage” or “wall-less” parking garage in 1933.