Royce Mobile

The climax of many Sci-fi movies is the arrival of the aliens in their magnificent interstellar spaceship with its ability to move at many times the speed of light.

Lights flash and cascade across the ship, exhaust plumes explode from the engines, chimes go off, people run away or towards the phenomena. Then the door opens and a dozen or more bobble-headed pale white creatures exit down a cheesy $100 ramp made of expanded metal.

Not only is the spaceship ramp at an angle that would make it a suicidal ski slope for someone in a wheelchair, but it also looks like it weighs twice as much as it should for the application, not to mention its appalling low-tech look.

Back in the 1970's, people in wheelchairs had a similar, but much more sophisticated ramp conversion to use to exit their vehicles. Called the Roycemobile, it was a modification to the side cargo door of the 70's full-sized Dodge and Plymouth vans. The entire door became a ramp and descended out of the van to the amazement of on-lookers.

Royce International used either the side sliding door, or bolted the side swing doors together and removed the hinges to make a platform. They hinged the bottom and at the top they installed a motor with two long cloth straps on each side of the door. When the belts unspooled, the top of the door opened and slowly lowered until it hit the ground. The inside of the door became the ramp platform. It was covered by diamond tread aluminum sheets that slid to help reduce the angle of the wheelchair, but the sucker was still real steep. Outside, the windows in the door were protected against scratching and damage by clear plastic coverings.

Royce had slick, full-color brochures advertising its products. At a show or on first impression, they were amazing-looking machines, but after you looked at them for awhile you realized what a Rube Goldberg device they were. First, like most other devices of the day, there were no safety features of any kind. Second, the bottom hinge had a bad habit of breaking. And third, no matter how hard you tried, the ramp always seemed to plop down in poop or mud. Once you closed the ramp, these foreign substances would be sticking to the outside of the van.

One day in early 1977 I was answering the telephones when a potential customer called and wanted both a lift and a new door for their van. It seems that the Roycemobile door had fallen off at 45 miles per hour. Needless to say, what was left of the door wasn't worth picking up off the road.

This would all be funny if there had not been reports of injuries. A friend of mine fell from one of the steep ramps and broke her leg when her wheelchair went out of control. She had to sue a friend's insurance company to get the medical bills paid.

Mr Royce, the owner of Royce International passed away in the late 70's and his company died a short time later. The idea has never been recreated by anyone, although the motion of a lowered floor minivan ramp and the design of the Superarm Lift made by Handicaps, Inc., occasionally make me remember the Roycemobile.

It is, perhaps, appropriate to remember what has been tried in the past and failed gloriously. These stories give us a perspective on our industry and on what works and what does not work despite its "cool" looks.