The Playboy Land Yacht

The old chuck berry song No Money Down told about a fantasy Cadillac with a bed in the back, phone, TV, shortwave radio and other optional extras; but the machine Chuck sang about couldn't touch what's pictured here and on the following pages. The land yacht we commissioned Detroit designer Syd Mead to create is a six-wheel wonder vehicle that combines many of today's mechanical innovations with some space-age technology that you can expect to be incorporated into tomorrow's assembly-line mobile homes. Not only does it contain almost all the amenities you would ordinarily leave behind when embarking on an extended trip, or just out for a day's cruise, it can also drive itself--via electronic sensors--while you and a companion relax in the yacht's luxurious front lounge. But that's getting ahead of our story. Before entering the yacht, let's take a walk around it and examine some of the exterior features.

Look again at the illustration on the previous page and you'll see that the yacht's pointed nose serves two functions: It provides the aerodynamic styling that a machine of this size demands and it allows for the four lounge seats up front to be arranged at a 45-degree angle to the axis of the vehicle, thus saving considerable interior space.

For night driving, the yacht's front lighting consists of two swing-down iodine quartz lamps, plus four normal high/low/intermediate lights, which are folded back when off, swinging out against adjustable stops (for proper aiming) when the sliding cover door is activated. In addition, a front-scanning infrared lamp produces a wide-angle fan of radiation, for pickup on the yacht's console-mounted TV screen. What you see in the monitor is an infrared-filter view of the roadway. This system is an outgrowth of the exotic Air Force fighter-pilot technology, which produces an animated, terrain-characteristic "picture" in front of the pilot, regardless of the weather or visibility conditions. Thus, once the driver gets the feel of his infrared screen, he can safely cruise at normal speeds in dense fog, darkness, drifting snow or heavy rain.

As an added safety feature, the yacht's prow consists of twin free-floating bumpers extending along either side of the front peak, with a center section that is projected hydraulically when the vehicle is in motion. (The same section can be protruded when the machine is parked, as a protective measure against ham-fisted drivers who park by ear.)

Furthermore, when the yacht has been driven out to the boonies and parked on uneven terrain, twin electric screw jacks strategically mounted at either side of each wheel can be activated to level the machine. They also come in handy when you have to change a flat.

And while we're mentioning unpleasant chores such as tire changing, it's nice to know that the yacht's exterior body panels all remove quickly for servicing circuitry as well as for allowing access to subsystems behind interior walls, such as lighting conduits, vent ductwork, etc. Tanks for on-board water and the like are slung under the body sill and serve also to disguise the actual floor line. (Incidentally, the engine compartment is designed to handle a flat-8 diesel.)

Atop the land yacht, you'll notice a mini sun lounge or deck that's actually a housing for the air-conditioning unit, the top of the food-service-and-entertainment module and headroom for the rear lounge. The perimeter of this lounge is a glass reveal with a surrounding air channel. This produces, at speed, a bubble of air arcing over the space so that the deck can be open during highway travel and not produce buffeting or excessive wind noise. The floor of the sun deck consists of four motor-driven plates that can be lowered into the rear lounge area for attaching or removing the deck's snap-on waterproof nylon cushions.

Extending along the side of the yacht is a narrow window that's approximately at shoulder level in the front lounge (due to the higher position of the seats) and at eye level, when seated, in the rear lounge. The lights on the sun lounge are legally required clearance markers for width, length and height. Side marker lights are in the bumper collapse space at each end of the vehicle. At the front of the yacht, just ahead of the sunroof opening, there's a flap, below which is housed the forward-scanning radar fixture.

So much for the yacht's exterior. Let's now step inside, the open-sesame being made either by inserting a plastic phone dial card into a slot concealed in the door or by pushing a special code sequence on a button plate adjacent to the card slot. (Thus, there's no more lost-key blues and you never have to worry about locking yourself out.)

In theory, the yacht's interior is designed to be that of a very large, roomy, consummately comfortable car, rather than a cramped, miniaturized house. This is an important distinction. A 6' x 7' bed, for example, is enormous (that's the size of the one you find in the rear lounge), whereas a 6' x 7' room is tiny. All the design features of the vehicle are geared toward achieving the over-all ambience of luxurious fixtures and appointments in a confined space through the use of proportion, perspective and alignment of various interior spaces.

In the front lounge area, there are four reclining chairs arranged in a conversational grouping not unlike what you'd find in a posh men's club. But when the occasion dictates, these chairs can be lowered to create a 5' x 8' sleeping area, with the center console (which we'll explain) serving as a bedside table. Thus, you have within arm's reach stereo controls, a phone and the option of investigating outside midnight noises with infrared TV or a full-range radar system.

But now we're going to put you into the driver's seat and explain some of the space-age technology that has gone into this wondermobile of the future. In front of your chair is the aforementioned control console--a highly complex brain box mounted on a triangular fixture that allows it to be slid to the center of the vehicle and serves as a bedside or cocktail table housing an AM/FM/SW/LW receiver and cassette unit.

However, you're probably itching to get your hands on the land yacht's steering wheel, but--surprise--it doesn't come equipped with such a pedestrian mechanism. Instead, what you maneuver with are twin control handles mounted on rotating disks; each is connected through electrohydraulic valves to the powersteering system and turn together, although either one may be used, one-handed, to steer. The tear-shaped buttons atop each handle (as you'll see in the picture on page 149) are for signaling a turn.

Adjacent to the left steering handle is a dial with clock markings and a switch below that. This little gizmo is a 24-hour repeat-alarm-and-locking system that automatically locks the yacht within 30 minutes of your leaving, if this function has not already been performed. (You can also use it for activating cooking units at specified times.)

Now we come to something really special, available with a little help from the friendly geniuses who reside at Honeywell and other companies that are into the development of recognition circuitry. The current state of the art of this highly specialized field is just this: It now has become possible to construct "sentient" low-level intelligence capabilities that can relieve a driver of constant control and include corrective surveillance of a vehicle in motion, even in light traffic. What this means is that there now are available exotic recognition/reading sensing devices (being used primarily by the military) that can visually pick up an object, trace its profile and recognize it, along with a dozen other sophisticated tricks. Couple this kind of technology with the power steering and electronic cruise-control throttle system that are incorporated in our land yacht and you are enjoying a control setup that can be instructed to run through thousands of situation analogs per second, select optimum instructions and execute them with nothing more than casual supervision by the man at the wheel (or we should say the twin steering handles).

This drive-select control is a padded, palm-operated movable fixture located in the center of the control console. The two program sets you can choose for driving are Full Auto 1 and Full Auto 2, with readout windows in each button to indicate which series of functions, or which control level, is in use. Full Auto 1 would be a predetermined program for long-distance driving on cross-country routes and would be complex enough to pass slow-moving vehicles, look ahead for a vehicle coming onto the road from an on ramp, slowdowns, etc. It would also monitor "closing speed" to avoid rapid braking, which is common on long drives because of the hypnotic effect of hour-after-hour 55-mph driving.

Full Auto 2 would be a more complex program for driving in light urban traffic, slow-moving rush-hour-crawl situations and repetitive circumstances, such as motoring to your country house or to the local airport. Recognition gates would differentiate between, say, trucks and sports cars at any distance, read the traffic lights and determine the boundaries of the road or street by average alignment of other vehicles fore and aft; in other words, fit the land yacht into the sense of the traffic pattern.

Incidentally, the padded bar within arm's reach of the drive-select control is a horn button--and, no, it doesn't play the first eight bars of the theme from 2001.

Now take a look at the top row of the instrument console that's directly in front of the dual steering handles. Aside from the usual left-right turn indicators, fuel-capacity, water-temperature and oil-pressure gauges, speedometer and odometer, you get a few goodies borrowed from road-rally enthusiasts--specifically, a diode readout that gives the average miles per hour for a constantly "moving envelope" of 100 miles coupled with accumulated mileage from a selected point; (concluded on page 158)Playboy Land Yacht(continued from page 152) and a six-digit time readout below that is accumulated driving time from a selected reference point.

The video screen, located in the center of the control panel, can be used in various ways--as an exterior monitor when the vehicle is parked (both cameras have sweep angle mountings), as a rearview scanner when in motion and, as we mentioned, as a forward-scanning, computer-produced, infrared-filter view of the roadway in fog, darkness or other obscuring weather conditions.

To the right of the screen is a pair of slide scales, with arrow buttons above and below. The lighted scale controls screen brightness; the dark one selects the scanning mode for visual pickup. That is, you push the top arrow for a front view and the bottom one to look behind you. Of course, you not only look around but can zoom a little speck in the distance up to recognition size, scan back and forth across a multilane highway or investigate a selected vehicle nearby. The slide on the scale determines the degree of zoom involved.

We could spend pages discussing other technical innovations built into the Playboy Land Yacht's dashboard; for example, automatic trip tapes activated by the accumulated-mileage indicator to announce exits, route changes, etc.; controls for automatic tire-pressure adjustment; twin auxiliary electric traction motors coupled to the rear-wheel set; a radio phone that can be broadcast for conference calls throughout the machine; multiple mikes throughout the yacht for conversations at speed; and multiple trouble-analysis buttons similar to those built into TV sets and computers to facilitate repairs.

But instead, let's imagine you're on a stretch of uninterrupted highway, the kind, say, you might find in Nevada. We move the padded, palm-operated drive-select control to Full Auto 1, knowing it's unlikely that we'll be encountering any heavy traffic, and turn to explore the remainder of the land yacht.

Directly to the rear of the front lounge where we've been relaxing is the yacht's main audio/video center, with storage for 48 or so cassettes ready to be played on the built-in quadraphonic sound system. Above a portion of the cassettes that can be seen (with access door open) on page 150 are the controls for all audio/video functions and a 4" x 5" monitor screen that can be used in conjunction with the portable TV camera housed just above the monitor.

Next to these electronic playthings is the yacht's galley. On board this land-going vessel, however, you've none of the time-consuming chores that traditionally accompany chow time. A microwave oven is your silent chef, turning out piping-hot prepackaged delicacies that only moments before were in the cold-storage unit. Drink to accompany your food is just around the corner, housed in a capsule-shaped compartment covered by a rotating stainless-steel shield. You'll also be happy to know that this unit has an added fillip: a series of foam-rubber "fingers" that can be placed between bottles when the vehicle is in motion, preventing breakage and noise. Built into a small console at the base of the bar pylon are a glass washer, an insulated ice-storage compartment and an automatic ice-cube maker.

So you've fixed yourself a drink (soft, of course, because the yacht's in motion) and stepped back to relax in one of the rear lounge's deep, spacious chairs. (Come night, these chairs can be electronically converted into an even more spacious bed.)

Above the bar unit are a color-TV set that, for viewing convenience, can move through a 20-degree arc, a digital-time readout and a projection unit that throws a wide-angle movie, TV or VTR image onto the viewing screen, which can be lowered from its housing just above the huge rear picture window.

For additional privacy, a blackout screen and a semidark screen are stored in a full-width slot at the base of the window and can be raised into position by cable and motor. (Bottom-to-top movement allows one to partially lower the blackout screen, thus letting light in, while still ensuring that an interior view of the lounge itself is unavailable to curious passers-by.) Ashtrays and lighters are located around the chairs, per auto manufacturers' practice, and a phone is housed in a stainless-steel egg-shaped capsule just inside the door.

Only one additional element of our Playboy Land Yacht is left to be explored and that's the bath (check the cutaway view on page 150), a compact yet ultraluxe sanctum located adjacent to the audio/video controls. Housed here, of course, is the john (an air-flush/water-rinse type that swivels to a diagonal position for use), a fold-down vanity/basin and--wonder of wonders--an air-inflatable tub that can be expanded along one of the rear lounge's walls to allow for showering or soaking. The dimensions of the bath (with the tub expanded) are approximately 4' x 4-1/2', ample for all but the most Brobdingnagian. Furthermore, the entire bath section can be removed as a unit when the machine is being used for urban/suburban needs, thus increasing interior space and allowing for the inclusion of an additional chair identical to those in the front lounge area.

So there it is, the Playboy Land Yacht; a 21st Century vehicle that's a lot closer to reality than you might think. For come the not-too-distant future, when the oil crunch has been settled and the economy has righted itself, this is definitely the direction that the mobile home away from home will take. Relatively small (the vehicle's over-all length is only 20'8") and virtually all-inclusive, the land yacht will bring ultimate thrills to the open road and also be great for tooling around town--just to see heads turn. In the meantime, it's OK to dream.