The Long Road to Plastic Fiberglass Cars

Note: This story was originally published in the November 2022 issue of Vette Vues Magazine:

“Chevrolet To Make Plastic Cars Here” was the headline from St. Louis Post Dispatch on September 29, 1953. That must have been startling to the general public in 1953. Plastic products were not yet ubiquitous. Besides, from the beginning of the automobile era, cars and trucks had steel bodies. The earliest vehicles had wooden platforms and spoked wheels because those were carryovers from the wooden wagon days. Car bodies were made from stamped steel, period.

It is interesting how slow technology progressed in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. The early days of the modern American petroleum era started in 1859 with Edwin Drake‘s first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It took forty-nine years for Ford to start mass-producing automobiles. As scientists, engineers, and tinkerers, such as Henry Ford, slowly toiled away, much was learned about the uses of crude oil, besides kerosene for lighting. This led to the petrol-chemical era and launched all manner of things that could be created with “Black Gold”, and “Texas Tea”.

Fiberglass Officially Invented in 1933

What we know as “fiberglass” wasn’t invented and patented in America until 1933 by Owens-Illinois researcher Games Slayter. Owens-Illinois was the successor to the Owens Bottle Company, the creator of the first automated glass bottle-making machines. In 1929 the company merged with Illinois Glass Company to become Owens-Illinois; which joined with specialty glass, ceramic, and optics maker, Corning Incorporated, to become Owens-Corning.

But the first-ever patent for “glass fibers” was issued to Herman Hammesfahr, a Prussian-American scientist in 1880. People had been playing around with glass fibers for centuries before but didn’t quite know what to do with the material. It would take another fifty-three years for the second critical element to be created at the chemical level; petrochemical resin.

Slayer accidentally discovered that he could make glass “strands” by directing a jet of compressed air at a stream of molten glass. The material was originally called, “glass wool”. But again, what do you do with it?

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Enter the chemistry know-how of “E. I. Du Pont de Nemours de Company”, aka, “DuPont”, originally founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill by French-American chemist Eleuthere Irenee du Pont. In 1939 DuPont developed a new resin compound to work with Owens-Corning’s glass strands. The American Cyanamid Company started producing industrial-use chemical resin (not plant resin) in 1942, just in time for the war effort.

Say Hello to GRP – Glass Re-enforced Plastic

The new material was called, “Glass Reinforced Plastic”, or “GRP” for short. In other words, glass fibers, are reinforced with resin to form a plastic, mold-able material. The physical properties of this new material were amazing. It was discovered to be stronger, pound-for-pound than many metals, non-magnetic, non-conductive, and transparent to electromagnetic radiation, such as military radar systems. Later we’ll get into the many uses for fiberglass. Plus, GRP can be molded into complex shapes that would soon be explored like crazy.

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Henry Ford, ever the tinkerer, loved the idea of plastics and seriously helped lead the way for GRP in the automobile industry. Ford was fascinated with the idea of plastic-body cars and the lightweight, rear-engine VWs he saw in Germany in the late 1930s (Ford had manufacturing plants in Germany). Ford engineer Robert Boyer was the lead engineer in developing Ford’s new mold-able plastic sheets. In 1940 Boyer fitted a plastic trunk lid on a new Ford that Henry loved to whack at with a rubber-booted ax! He even invited skeptics to “take a whack!”

But Ford’s plastic was made from plant material; soybeans, hemp, wheat, ramie, and flax. In 1941 Ford created a prototype car with an all-plastic body mounted to a round tubular space-frame. Henry forecasted that plastic-bodied cars would be in production in one to three years, but then WW-II broke out and the auto industry was put on hold. Henry Ford died in 1947, but he did see the first completed plastic-bodied Ford car, almost six years before the first Corvette made its debut at the Waldorf-Astoria GM Motorama.

But like most technological breakthroughs, military applications came first. While GRP didn’t save the war, it played a part, as the war effort forced designers, engineers, and chemists to invent new things to do with this cutting-edge technology. But before GRP could be pressed into service for the war effort, a mountain of processes had to be worked out.

How to Make Glass Fibers

Fiberglass strands were made of silica sand, kaolin, limestone, fluorspar, colemanite, and other minerals. The glass brew is then heated into a liquid, then extruded through small, 5-to-25-micrometer diameter bearings. The average human hair is 80 micrometers. The tiny glass filaments were then chemically coated and bundled together to create “roving”, long narrow bundles of fiber, not unlike spun yarn or wool. The diameter and number of the glass filaments predetermine its weight. The “yield” is the “yards-per-pound” and the “tex” is the measure of the “grams-per-km”.

The rovings are then used for different purposes. Rovings can be directly used in composite applications, such as “gun roving” where the material is chopped into short pieces, dropped into a jet that coats the pieces with resin, and then the coasted glass fibers are projected onto a mold surface.

This process is used to make structural and complex automotive parts, fiberglass rods for composite insulators, parts used in electric motors and transformers, circuit boards, aircraft components, stiffening bars for PVC windows in construction, fabrics such as chopped strand knit fabrics, woven fabrics, mats, unidirectional fabrics and so much more. The only limitations are those of the designer’s imagination.

Chopped Strand Mats (CSM) have their fibers randomly spread across one another and held together with a binder. The hand-layup method is when material sheets are pressed into a mold and coasted with resin. The binder dissolves the resin and easily conforms to the shape of the mold. After the component has cured, it can be removed from the mold and finished. Laying numerous layers of mat and resin in different directions adds to the overall strength and stiffness. Sometimes the glass mat and resin are used as an outside shell around a foam board shape, such as in the making of surfboards.

The pultrusion technique pushes and pulls the material in a constant cross-section. Filament winding winds the filaments under tension over a mandrel. This process produces oars, bicycle rims, golf club shafts, pipes, bicycle forks, power transmission poles, missile casings, lamp posts, and all manner of tubular, pipe-like items.

Only “Big Industry” Could Have Made Fiberglass

The amount of heavy-lifting science and engineering that went into the creation of GRP is staggering and only could have been accomplished by large companies with extensive resources to not only solve all the problems of manufacturing but also the creation of the raw material for industry and privateers to work with.

After the war ended, GRP entered the hands of the entrepreneurs. Owens-Corning Fiberglas very much wanted to expand its business into the automotive field. In Emeryville, California, Kaiser Labs made several GRP prototype cars. Car-maker Graham-Paige joined with William Bushnell Stout to make the first-ever car made almost completely from GRP. The fiberglass component included; the roof, floor, and sides with 3-ply, 1/16th” inch thick, to 20-ply, 2” thick layers, by sandwiching honey-combed sections with GRP. This was considered a cutting-edge technique in 1945.

Popular Science Magazine Was Impressed

The prototype was called the Stout Forty-Six and was featured in Popular Science magazine that stated, “… It has been estimated to have, pound-for-pound, five times the strength of structural steel, and three-to-four times the impact strength. You can smash the rear deck with a sledgehammer and not make a dent. The strength allows the body to be used as a structural part, like some airplane fuselages. Springs and engine are hung from thickened portions of the body.”

Stout said the prototype was a “… $10,000 experiment”, a lot of money in 1946! (around $175,000 in 2025 money) But the car companies were too busy fulfilling a big pent-up demand for new vehicles and weren’t interested in plastic-bodied cars. As of 2014, the Stout Forty-Six is still around.

Another one-off prototype car was made in 1946 by automotive designer and customizer, Howard “Dutch” Darrin. This car wasn’t as ambitious as the Stout Forty-Six, but was something that could be built, marketed, and sold… maybe. (think, the Tucker 48 Sedan)

The Kaiser-Darren Fiberglass Sports Car

Darrin’s car, later named the “Darrin” had a perimeter frame, enclosed rear wheels, a curved windshield, a tilt-forward front end, and was very rounded. The prototype was GRP, but production plans called for a steel body, likely due to curing problems, shrinkage, and cracking. Howard Darrin wanted to take on the “Big Three”, but his 2,400-pound, five-passenger car went nowhere. Then in 1952, Darrin debuted his Kaiser-Darren two-seater sports car at the Petersen Publishing Motorama Car Show. The car was well received and went into production in 1954, but only 435 cars and six prototypes were built. Dreaming up car concepts is one thing, manufacturing is another.

One of the first serious civilian commercial products to use fiberglass after the war was the making of fiberglass-hull pleasure boats. William “Bill” Tritt was a production planner for Douglass Aircraft during the war and a boating enthusiast. Using GRP skills learned from his job, Tritt built himself a 21-foot sloop boat. Tritt then teamed up with Otto Baeyer (not related to the founding family of Bayer Corp) to form the Green Dolphin Boat Works and started making replicas of his sloop, as well as smaller power boats, and, easier-to-sail boats. In 1950 Tritt and Baeyer formed the Glasspar Company to continue making boats and parts for boats.

The Brooks Boxer

Tritt took on a project for Air Force officer Kenneth B. Brooks, to build a fiberglass body for a tricked-out Jeep for Brooks wife. Tritt made a slick one-piece body the same as he made boat hulls from a full-size wood-based, plaster-finished model used to make his molds. While working on the car, Eric Irwin of Costa Mesa, saw Tritt’s work-in-progress and was inspired to make his own fiberglass body for an open sports car he was building, powered by a hopped-up Studebaker six.

When Irwin’s Lancer Sports Car was finished, the British magazine, “The Motor” called the car, “The cleanest two-seater roadster that that the postwar world has produced.” The car was roadworthy in May 1951 and was the only fiberglass car at the November 1951 Peterson Motorama Car Show in Los Angeles. Irwin went on to make a dozen sports car bodies.

With the Korean War heating up, Glasspar was having trouble getting resin, but the Naugatuck Chemical Company had just opened a new warehouse in South Los Angeles. Tritt said he’d never heard of the company, so he took Brooks custom Jeep and met with Naughtuck’s Bud Crawford.

The men talked and Crawford told Tritt, “No order from the War Department, no resin for civilian use”. As Tritt was leaving, Crawford saw the Brooks Jeep, liked what he saw, and talked with the “right guy”. A day later, Naugatuck company man and proponent of GRP, Earle Ebers, contacted Tritt and extended a line of credit to Glasspar for Vibrin resin.

Meanwhile, Tritt and his crew completed Brooks’ Willys-based custom Jeep. Because of Mrs. Brooks’ passion for her boxer dogs, the car was nick-named, the “Brooks Boxer”. With Naugatuck Chemical as a major supplier, the car was later renamed “The Alembic-I”, was shown at car shows, to car companies, and was featured in the February 25, 1952 issue of Life Magazine in a one-page feature titled, “Plastic Bodies for Autos”.

But the car wasn’t getting anywhere with the big car companies and Gasspar was advised by U.S. Rubber’s Detroit man that they’d have to show up in Detroit with a GRP car to prove to the hard noses there that a plastic car could be done. Naugatuck’s Earle Ebers was so enthusiastic about GRP cars, he and his wife took a seven-day, cross-country trip in the open roadster, now renamed “Alembic I; named after the Naughtuck Chemical’s company logo, a hexagonal benzene ring. Some mild paint crazing around the cowl was the only sign of wear on the body.

Glasspar and Naugatuck started selling just the GRP replica bodies for $650, designed for a 100-inch wheelbase car. This could be considered the original fiberglass “kit car” enterprise. Eleven years later, Bruce Meyers was hugely successful with his Meyers Manx kit car, based on a shortened VW Beetle platform.

The Alembic I body was redesigned by designer and stylist, Howard “Dutch” Darren with new rear fenders and a front end that looked little like the Alembic I. Downey, California Willys dealer, B. R. “Woody” Woodill set up a little assembly line with a special frame to use Willis chassis parts and drive-train from a Willis Overland. Woody just wanted to make something special and unique. Several hundred Woodill Wildfire cars were built from 1953 to 1957. Howard Darren went on to design and build the Kaiser-Darren

The “Woodill Wildfire” Fiberglass Sports Car Movie Star

from the debut of Chevrolet’s Corvette at the 1953 GM Motorama that launched the GM’s venture into a fiberglass production car, the 1954 film “Johnny Dark” starring young Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie was about a cross-country road race from Canada to Mexico, featured a Woodill Wildfire, powered by a Willys F-head six. The plastic-bodied sports car was now a “Star Car”. The full movie can be seen on YouTube.

And it Only Took Nearly 100 Years

The story of fiberglass took a long time, nearly 100 years from the mid-1800s to the introduction of the 1953 Corvette. It was tinkers that got the concept rolling, with industrialists taking the new material into the world of mass production. While product developers and inventors ran with the material after the war, Detroit was slow to catch on. It took enthusiasts to take fiberglass into the mainstream for small-time car makers, racers, hot rodders, and custom car builders. In 1964 the Fiberfab Company was formed and advertised extensively complete car kits (actually full-size, running model car kits) in the car magazines.

By the mid-1960s as pop culture started to change, it seemed like everything was being made from plastic, and a lot of it wasn’t good. Soon plastic was known as “cheap plastic”, and plastic meant “fake”, as in plastic, phony people. Because Corvette bodies are technically “plastic”, based on the true meaning of the word,“mold-able”; many mistakenly referred to Chevy’s “plastic fantastic” Corvette as “cheap”. Even though the car was never inexpensive.

Between quality-control issues at the St. Louis assembly plant and how terrible Corvettes look after they’ve been crunched (as if metal looks good after a fender-bender), Corvettes had a hard slog getting some respect. And here we are now, with the 2023 Z06 Corvettes coming out soon, and the E-Ray in development (Note: after the publication of this story, On July 17, 2023, the E-Ray Hybrid Mid-Engine Corvette made it’s grand debut 70 years after the 1953 Corvette debut at the 1953 GM Mororama), Corvette has become one of GM’s flagship technology car. The Corvette is no longer the “Rodney Dangerfield” of GM cars.

To bring fiberglass fabrication full circle back to the world of grass-roots Corvette enthusiasts, consider this. In 1961, Southern California racer Dave MacDonald and his business and racing partner, Jim Simpson were inspired by Carroll Shelby to buy a hand-made, purpose-built chassis from Max and Ida Balchowski, so they could enter the big leagues in road racing.

Dave and Jim had been successful with their production-based SCCA Corvettes, so they wanted to have a Corvette body for their new chassis to wear.

The guys pulled molds from a production ’61 Corvette, made the fiberglass parts, and pieced the body together that looked like a prehistoric funny car version of a 1961 Corvette. And they did it in MacDonald’s garage themselves.

Fiberglass went from the tinkerers to the scientists, to big industry, to small businessmen, to average guys, willing to work hard and give it a try. – Scott