AUTOS: Plastic Ford Unveiled

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The first plastic car was shown by Henry Ford in Dearborn last week. It was the product of his own long dream—that industry should use more farm crops—and of the chemical inventiveness of his protege, 32-year-old Robert Allen Boyer (TIME, Nov. 11). His plastic, 70% cellulose with a resin binder, is made of soybeans, wheat, cotton, hides, plus a few imported, now hard-to-get ingredients (cork, rubber, tung oil, ramie—formerly used to wrap Egyptian mummies). Last fall Boyer turned out a few panels, had his lanky boss whang at them harmlessly with an ax, was overjoyed when Ford gave him the go-ahead for a complete car.

Blunt-nosed, cream-colored, the plastic Ford looks much like any other 1942 automobile. It has a standard Ford 60 chassis, engine, wheels. But the plastic body cuts its total weight from 3,000 lb. to 2,000. The body consists of 14 panels (formed in 1,000-ton presses) attached to a tubular steel frame.

Chemist Boyer last week hoped for "limited production" by 1943, said "there's lots of development work to do." Plastic bodies would relieve some of Detroit's immediate worries over steel and chrome, but not over copper, zinc, nickel, other shortages. Nor could it easily get the new presses and tools to work the plastics. But in normal times, plastic cars would take some 10% of the steel industry's market and give it to farmers. The new Ford was the first gun in a technological revolution that may begin when the other guns are stilled.