For you Atlas / Allied Swallow owners out there… here’s a short one-page article from Motor Magazine in February, 1949.  It’s nice to see how they presented the car with specs on the basics.  It makes a nice comparison for you when showing the history, heritage and presentation of your rare and coveted Allied Swallow sports car.

Let’s see what they had to say about this special car back in 1949.

Have You Seen:  Cisitalia
Motor Magazine: February, 1949

Seven smoothly contoured tiny aluminum-bodied Italian Cisitalia cars have been brought into this country.  The roofline of these extremely low cars is just above the hood level of a Chevrolet, Ford, or Plymouth with no sacrifice in head or leg room. 

Powered by a 66 cubic inch 4 cylinder Fiat overhead-valve engine that develops 55 hp at 5,500 rpm with 7.5 to 1 compression ratio, these cars are capable of speeds around 95 mph.

The coupe illustrated sells for $7,500.  Custom coachbuilder Pinin Farina also makes an $8,500 convertible and a sport special with higher compression ratio which gives speeds in excess of 100 mph.

Summary:

What a beautiful smart little sports car, and you can see why the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) picked this as one of the most beautiful “8 Automobiles” back in 1951.  Click here for more information about this special show back in 1951 at MoMA that featured the Cisitalia Sports Car.

Even more important to us, though, is how we can see why the streamlined styling appealed to Bill Burke – who ultimately put it to use and set new speed records at Bonneville with his brand new fiberglass Atlas / Allied body.

Of course Burke powered his Allied Sports Car with something a bit different than the small Fiat engine – namely an Ardun equipped Ford Flathead V8-60.  Vrrrrrrroooooooom!  More on that story in the future here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Allied  /  Cisitalia

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

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* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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We’re always looking for the initial press release photos and captions for each of our favorite fiberglass sports cars.  Here’s an early photo and accompanying caption that was printed in the spring of 1956.  Let’s see what they had to say:

Woodill Wildfire Coupe Debuts
Rodding and Re-styling: May, 1956

Woodill Wildfire coupe body for 1956 features fastback styling and an inside luggage compartment of large proportions.  It’s made entirely of fiberglass, and can be bought as a complete car (with Eldorado engine) or in kit form.  Write Woodill Motor Company, Orange, California.

Summary:

As with the original Woodill Wildfire sports car, the Wildfire coupe was designed by Bill Tritt as guided by the style desired by B.R. “Woody” Woodill.  Only 1 Wildfire coupe was ever made and it disappeared soon after its initial appearance in 1956.

Maybe it’s still out there gang.  Which one of you will begin the search and find the last Woodill Wildfire ever made?  What a great story that would make here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Woodill Wildfire Sports Cars

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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Late last year, I found the following comment posted on a story about the McCormack Sports /Custom Car:

“I was so excited to find this website.  My dad is celebrating his 80th birthday this weekend.  He is the young man pictured next to Hank McCormack (Hank is holding the magazine) in the February, 1956 edition of Motor Life.  His name is Don Cox and he did the fiberglass construction on this car!   Another cool fiberglass story my dad told me is that he helped build the original cars for Disney’s Space Mountain ride!  Cindy Kaiser”

Some of the best research “finds” are those that reveal themselves to us here at Forgotten Fiberglass.  Such is the case with Cindy Kaiser and her father – Don Cox.  With Cindy’s help, I was able to speak at length with Don and learn more about his involvement with the history of the McCormack custom car.  Today’s story shares what I learned during several conversations.

So….away we go!

Shown here is Don Cox at left with Henry “Hank” McCormack at right holding magazine.

Interview With Don Cox
McCormack Mold Builder and Builder of First Body

Don Cox was born on April 21, 1932 – he’s 81 years old this year and doing great.   Back in 1953 and 1954 he was working for Glasspar in Costa Mesa, California, and that’s where he met Hank McCormack – or should I say that Hank met him.

When Don joined Glasspar they were still building Glasspar G2 bodies, but sales were starting to slow.   In fact he remembers watching and helping build just 2-3 of these G2 bodies.   In addition, Don helped build several small car bodies for the Autopia ride at Disneyland as well as several sailboats and other projects.  Don was a busy man working in the fiberglass industry at the height of designing and building your own fiberglass sports car right where it was happening most – Southern California.

But in 1954 work began to subside at Glasspar and like many hard working, enterprising young men Don began to look for additional means of earning income, and he began to work down the street from Glasspar for a company called Perm-o-glass.  Here he put his well-heeled skills to use building fiberglass milk truck bodies for Carnation.   And it was around this time when he was working on and off again for both companies,  that he met Hank McCormack.  Hank needed help and guidance to build a fiberglass body, and Don needed extra work.  The match was perfect for both.

Hank had already built the full-scale mock up of his car in plaster and screen, and when Don met Hank this “plug” or mock-up was all finished out – it was really pretty, Don Remembers.  Don was brought in because Hank did not have extensive fiberglass experience in 1954, and he wanted the mold done right.  And Don had plenty of experience to do this and was rarin’ to go – so off they went.

Photo of Don Cox from the 1950s. Thanks to Cindy Kaiser for sharing it from her family collection.

Don finished the mock up and prepped it to take a mold, by smoothing it down, waxing it carefully, and putting the release agent on it.  Then, he took a one-piece body mold from the plaster plug and split the mold into 5 pieces.  What this means is that the McCormack bodies were laid up as a one piece mold.  And when the fiberglass cured and was ready to be pulled from the mold, you unbolted the 5 pieces that comprised the mold, and the body was released – hopefully with ease.

Don created the 5-piece mold and the first body for Hank – all which was hand-laid fiberglass.  Hank helped a bit with building the mold, but Don believes that Hank was still learning fiberglass and needed help.  And once the body came out of the mold, there was much to do.  First, the edges of the body had to be cleaned/finished and then the hood.  The top was also a separate mold for the car.  The process of building the molds and first car body took about a month to complete.

And Don remembers that the first car had no doors – at least initially.

Here you can see that the McCormack Custom Car – as it was first built – did not yet have its doors. Other photos showing this same car show lack of doors and rounder more radiused rear wheel opening.

Quickly I went to the archives to inspect photos of the first car and two things seemed quite different on car #1.  First, the rear wheel opening was much smaller than all subsequent McCormack sports cars photographed and found.  And two…the first car did not have doors.

Very interesting.

Don Cox had to leave quickly after he built the molds and first body – a new job was waiting for him in Texas in 1954, so Hank McCormack later engineered both the doors and the change in rear wheel openings either on his own or with the guidance from  someone else.

But as Don pointed our during our conversation, once the molds were complete the remaining work would be easier to do.  This means that Hank may have used the opportunity to learn the trade through observation watching Don, and took to his newly joined craft just after Don left for Texas.  Research continues to answer this question.

Don shared one more piece of information that was new to me.  He said that when they took the photos for the February, 1956 issue of Motor Life Magazine, that the car was not complete at that time.  It was still being worked on extensively.   That’s probably why there are no engine photos, dashboard pictures, or interior shots.  And as we now know – no doors either.  This “build” process may well have led to the fact that the rear wheels couldn’t be removed unless the rear openings were changed as well.  Just a thought here for now, but a working theory for our research.

All McCormack Custom/Sports Cars found or photographed after the first one show a wider rear wheel opening – like this one shown here.

Summary:

We know that the car was ultimately finished, and in fact as you’ll learn in another upcoming story about the McCormack, a close friend of Hank’s – Don Smith – remembers that Hank sold his first car shown here and then built a second one – a car he would keep until he passed away many years later (he sold bodies as well to other people during this time).  More about the memories of Don Smith and Hank’s second car in a future story here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  McCormack Custom / Sports Cars

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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Car Craft published one of the most detailed series of articles ever to appear on this subject, beginning in October, 1954 and culminating in February, 1955.  They went on to cap this series by publishing a “Buyer’s Guide” for fiberglass sports cars in March, 1956.  Click here to review this special final article by Car Craft Magazine – one presented here at Forgotten Fiberglass in 11 separate stories.

All in all, this is an amazing series of articles published during the golden age of designing and building your own fiberglass sports car – a window into the 1950s like no other.  Click here to review each of these stories on Car Craft’s “Building Your Own Fiberglass Sports Car” here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

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Hi Gang…

There’s a lot to cover in this article which focuses on building the plaster splash female mold. Let’s jump in and see what Car Craft Magazine had to say about this topic – here on Forgotten Fiberglass.

And away we go….

Building a Fiberglass Car
Part 3: The Plaster Splash Female Mold
By Ray Brock

Last month, our latest construction series, “Building a Fiberglass Car” covered the necessary steps of making a fiberglass female mold from a full scaled plaster mock-up male mold.  This month, with the help of the J.A. Milani Plaster Mold Shop, located at 9814 Irwin Avenue, Inglewood, California, we have the privilege of presenting an exclusive and highly informative feature on how to make a plaster splash female mold from the same mockup.

For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the process of plaster splashing, the simplest definition would be to say that it’s a mold that is made by splashing plaster over an object, reinforcing the plaster (before dry) with fiber hemp and a wooden frame structure.

Probably the most common use for this plaster splashing process, in the past, before fiberglass car body molds were thought of, has been to construct the many ornate fixtures that are found in the ceilings and walls of large motion picture theaters. 

Motion picture technicians use this process extensively today in their business for creating special motion picture effects and prefab set designs.  The popularity of the process with backyard fiberglass car builders has grown considerably because of its low expense when compared to the price of making a fiberglass female mold.

Though less expensive than the fiberglass mold, it still has restrictions on how many bodies can be made from its plaster mold.  Generally, only one body can be made.  In some cases, though, if extra caution is taken when removing the first body from the plaster mold, the mold can be patched up, where crack and impurities appear and one more body can be made, but this is usually the limit.

If you wish to make only one or two fiberglass bodies cars then the plaster splashing process is a great savings.  But if many bodies are required, then a fiberglass female mold is compulsory.  The basic fundamentals of the process consist of taking the object you wish to reproduce and first begin by brushing on a parting agent.

Stearic acid is generally used, but any light oily or greasy substance will work.  After coating the surface with the parting agent, you then sprinkle the object with a powdered chalk.  A dry-brush technique is now employed, brushing and rebrushing the surface to a very smooth finish.

Next, the plaster is mixed.  Use casting or molding plaster which can be purchased at any building supply company.  Make sure that you mix the plaster in a large enough container which will allow you to finish a complete section of the mold at one time without mixing any more material.  A large dishpan usually works out fine. 

The consistency of the plaster should resemble thick mild.  Now, take a small container such as a one-pound coffee can, fill it with the plaster solution and, by holding it close to the object to be plastered, dip your hand into the plaster and begin to dabble the plaster onto the surface with your hand.

When we say dabble, we mean for you to use short, light strokes with your hand and the plaster, similar to that of women sprinkling clothes before ironing.  When working on a vertical surface, such as the side of a car, the plaster will have a tendency to slide down the surface, especially when you get too much plaster into one area.

Work the complete surface over very lightly at first, coming back to where you first started and then repeat the application.  Keep up this dabbling application with the plaster ‘til you have reached approximately a 1/8 to ¼ of an inch thickness.  When this thickness is reached you will then start applying the hemp fiber.

The hemp fiber can be purchased at a building supply house the same as the casting plaster.  The method used for applying the help is: first tear off a section of the hemp and saturate it in the dishpan of plaster; next, remove it, ring it  out and lay it on the still moist plaster surface of the mold; spread it out flat and with a very light patting action with your hand, working the saturated hemp into the moist surface of the mold.

This patting action is used to fuse the two layers of plaster together, the plaster you put on by dabbling and, now, the saturated hemp layers.  Keep applying the small sections of the saturated hemp ‘til the complete area is covered.  One layer of the hemp over the surface is sufficient.

Now comes the wooden framework that is made up from 2×4 lumber.  The framework should be long enough to run the distance of the mold.  The framework is placed up next to the side of the mold or over the top, whatever the case may be, and is tied to the mold by making up saturated hemp stringers.   The following photo story will illustrate this particular operation.

When an object as large as a car is undertaken, it is generally compulsory to make the mold up in sections.  The sides are treated separately, the front end and tail end are separate sections and the top constitutes another section.

The illustration showing how to section up the car and how the sections overlap one another should be given considerable consideration before attempting to plaster.  No one section is removed ‘til the completed mold has been plastered, then they are removed one by one from their various positions.

The mold sections are actually designed to interlock with one another so that when they are removed, piece by piece, from the mockup they fit back together again with specific positions.  Pay particular attention to the femal and male key locks that are incorporated into the overlapping edges of the sections, allowing the mold to be put back together with perfect registry.

Our following photo story illustrates how the plaster splash mold is made by using one of the sides of the mold as a working example.  Actually all the sections of the molds are made in this same illustrated manner.  For instance, first you make one side of the female mold.  The next step is to make the other side.

Leaving both of these female mold sides next to the male mockup in their original positions, go to the top of the male mockup and start making up the top female mold sections.  When all of the sections are complete, let the entire female mold dry thoroughly while still on the male mockup.

When dry, the top section and end pieces are removed first, then the two side sections.  To set up the mold for use, you turn it in an upside down position, making sure that the various sections register with one another and nail and wire the whole female mold together.

Although plaster splashing process is a simple and inexpensive method, it still requires basic steps to be followed.  Between this copy and the following illustrative photographs, this job should be a simple one for you backyard fiberglass car builders.

Summary:

Hold onto your fiberseat gang…our next article in this series will cover molding the glass body.  And  you thought the hard work was over

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Building Your Own Fiberglass Sports Car  /  Sorrell Sports Cars

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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I wish I could have been there – the last Petersen Motorama of the 1950s.

The actual name was “The 6th Annual International Motor Review” but that was the name change forced on Petersen in 1954 by an overly aggressive General Motors.  Few people have compared and contrasted the two Motoramas but GM and Petersen were going head-to-head in the 50s – at least in Los Angeles.

GM Motoramas were held from 1949 through 1956 skipping years 1951 and 1952.  Petersen Motoramas were consecutive from 1950 through 1955.  After ’55, Petersen wouldn’t hold another Motorama until 1966 – nine years later.

And the Petersen show in ’55 was amazing.  This was the last big year of of the early fiberglass specials.  Names such as Victress, Bangert, Sorrell, Viking-Craft, Woodill and other luminaries of the fiberglass world were there to amaze the audience – for 10 days straight.  However, starting in 1956 these names would begin to fade into history and new names would begin to appear such as Devin, LaDawri, Kellison, and Bocar.  This year – 1955 – was the last big year for what we now call “First Generation Fiberglass Sports Cars.”

If I could go back in time to this show in 1955 with my digital camera….what amazing sights I would bring back for all of us to see

Such as the debut of Hank McCormack’s custom car – the “McCormack.”  Yes, you can add his name to the list above of fiberglass sports cars that appeared in ’55 at the Motorama, and today’s article is the earliest in print that we’ve found so far showing the McCormack to a wide-eyed public.

Although it’s just a short note and photo, here’s what the photo showed and the caption shared:

Summary:

Hank McCormack produced these cars though about 1960 when he sold the molds to “Track Kraft” who continued to market the McCormack under a new model name – the “TK-103.”  However, by the summer of 1961, the molds and company were for sale again, and no further information of these cars was ever seen.

And as for the other fiberglass cars that appeared at the 1955 Petersen Motorama….Victress, Bangert, Sorrell, Viking-Craft, Woodill and others….. you’ll read about those and how they fared at the ’55 Petersen Motorama in future stories here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

In the meantime, you can check out this same show in 1955 by reading the the full story below – covered in 6 glorious pages of Car Craft Magazine from January, 1956 – ready and willing for your eyes to behold.  Just click on each picture below to review the full story on an enlarged image on your screen.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page now to begin.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  McCormack Custom Cars

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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Last month we published part 1 of this series – an article by Robert Cumberford that appeared in Car and Driver Magazine in September, 1962.  Click here to review part 1 of this series.  In that article, Cumberford reviewed his experience and thoughts on designing and building your own fiberglass body and the effort it took to do so.

He ended his article back in 1962 with this sage advice for those strong-willed folks who wanted to design and build their own sports car body:

“If you have a passionate longing for a body made of fiberglass, buy one ready-made. There are at least 30 types to choose from, and you ought to be able to find something you like among them. If, on the other hand, you are more interested in having a body built to your own designs than in the material it’s made from, don’t make it yourself-hire Pininfarina or Vignale or Ghia or Fantuzzi. Anyone of them will build a superbly finished, trimmed and painted body on your chassis cheaper than you can in fiberglass-and far better than you can hope to.”  Robert Cumberford, Car and Driver: September 1962.

Is that the end of the story?  I’m pleased to say “no.”   I’m honored to have been corresponding with Robert for the past few years and asked him if he would take the time to review his earlier article and share his thoughts on how the article has held up over time – now over 50 years old.

I’m pleased to say that he agreed to do so, and it’s with great thanks and appreciation that I share with you, today, Robert’s thoughts on the his original article titled “Don’t Build That Fiberglass Body!”

With that said, take it away Robert

Robert Cumberford
Reaction to Article From Car and Driver Magazine: September 1962

Thanks to the diligence of Geoff Hacker, I recently had a chance to re-read a Car and Driver article I wrote almost fifty years ago with the provocative title “Don’t Build That Fiberglass Body.” It’s an article I wish I’d read about fifty-two years ago, before I built my first fiberglass body.

It probably wouldn’t have discouraged the energetic young guy I was then, but it should have done so. As I told Geoff in an e-mail, I stand behind every word written so long ago. Making a one-off fiberglass body is a thankless task, best left to skilled professionals.

Oh, I’ve succumbed to the lure a number of times in the intervening years, but looking back, I honestly wish I hadn’t. The design part is easy, particularly for me, as I am a professional designer, but once I’d done a scale model, I should have stopped all physical effort and left it to someone else.

I did that for a radical CanAm race car just four years after writing that article. I made a clay quarter-scale half-model, did full-size drawings and turned the whole job over to my client’s crew. And to my surprise, the two or three racing mechanics, a machinist and a carpenter shop boss did an absolutely splendid job of making a full-size buck in a matter of a couple of weeks.

From Robert Cumberford: “Geoff, In searching for a good picture of the ’59 Formula Junior, I came across this shot of the Can Am body plug mentioned in my introduction, done by my client’s team that had never done anything like it before. This was hand-cut from urethane foam, then primed and sanded. Best, Robert”

They had never done anything like it before, but armed with really accurate drawings and photos of the model, they accomplished the task perfectly. If I had done it myself, as I had on a Formula Junior car, my first solo effort, it would have taken me months, despite my knowing what to do and how to do it. For someone without the same car design experience, the time would probably have been measured in years.

From Robert Cumberford: Geoff, In 1959, on the 5th floor of a garage on the upper East side in Manhattan, I built the body for a Formula Junior. Pretty radical, first-ever layback driving position as far as I know. Front engine, using the British Ford 105E 80mm bore 1 liter engine. Project got bogged down for lack of finance, finally shipped the molds to Bill Devin. Don’t know what he did with them, but I’d sure like to have a body so I could make a Junior to that design. Except, of course, that 51 years later I’d still get bogged down for lack of finance. Best, Robert.

Today no one need spend all that effort. Thanks to computers and digital data, these days we make a male model for a car body by machining it out of blocks of plastic foam — sometimes low-density material that can be cut in a single day, sometimes materials hard as oak that takes two or three days, Those shapes can be used for making molds, for checking dimensions, or even painted and finished to look like a real car in order to attract investors.

If you really, really want a one-of-a-kind car of your own design, and you really do have adequate talent to create something of which no one would be ashamed, then follow the advice in that long-ago article: don’t do it yourself, hire someone who knows how to do it for you.

The late, great amateur designer Richard Bosley, who made two exceptionally fine fiberglass bodies for one-off cars in the Fifties, told me that when it was all done, he could have had his cars made in Europe for a lot less money than he spent, in a lot less time.

I said in 1962, and I say now, older and (I hope) wiser: Don’t Build That Fiberglass Body!

Summary:

Thanks again to Robert Cumberford for taking the time to both review his earlier article and share his thoughts with us 50 years later.

Robert continues to write with great vigor and insight for Automobile Magazine, and I encourage you to pick up a current magazine and enjoy his writing as I do – each month.   For those of you interested in learning more about Robert Cumberford and his history, you can click here to review a recent profile on him printed in April, 2011 by the same magazine. 

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Building Your Own Fiberglass Car / Must Reads

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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That darn ‘ole Erich Schultz.  Every time I tell him about a car that needs “saving”, he’s off faster than a speeding bullet…..down the road….with Michelle and his son Kenny and on his way to his next “adventure” to save another car.

I never have understood people like that

I had a call from Tom Redel last year and he had an interesting story to tell – one of his lifelong friends, Jack Hilbig, had built a Victress S1A roadster from scratch back in the 1950s.  Tom’s family had acquired the Victress back in the 70s, and still had the car.  Did I want to know more?   Well of course!  Now that’s my favorite kind of story.

According to Tom, Jack had begin building his Victress in 1953 and finished it around 1955.  We can help to confirm the story since the title/registration was still in his possession (see below).

What’s neat about the title is it confirms the “finish” year as 1955 as well as the chassis/donor car as well.  And I like the fact that the “body type” is a Sport Coupe – not a bad modified name for a Victress back in the day.

When Jack was driving it in the 50s and 60s, he would drive it between Los Angeles (San Bernardino / Riverside area) and down to San Diego (Crest, California).  No doubt this Victress was seen all over Southern California back in the day.

Shown here is the original chassis used on the Jack Hilbig Victress S1A Roadster

As far as we know, Jack’s Victress was not featured in any shows, races or magazines.  He drove it and loved the experience of driving it as its design suggested – a sports car in every meaning of the word.

Tom remembers that the car originally had a 1940s’ Mercury frame and most likely the same engine from the donor vehicle.  But somewhere in the mid 1960s Jack upgraded the drivetrain to a mid 60s Buick – when he had a chance to do so.

But original owners/builders are a restless sort, and in the 1970s, Jack Hilbig once again wanted to make some changes to his Victress.  This time, though, it would be significant.  Jack was going to create a special tubular frame with Tom’s help.  He wanted a chassis that would give him even greater sports car performance on the streets of Southern California.

This photo was taken in the 1970s before the body was taken off the chassis.

Although it sounded like a great idea to both Jack and Tom at the time, “life” got in the way of completing the project and Jack decided he didn’t want to finish the car – so Tom inherited the project in the mid 1970s.  And although Tom and his family started working on it several times over the years, other projects and life demands intruded and in 2012 I received a call from Tom and the special history of the “Jack Hilbig Victress S1A Roadster.”

Enter Erich Schultz stage left.

I shared the story  with Erich and he was rarin’ to go and save the car.  I put both Tom and Erich in touch and with a bit more effort, the Victress was secured and brought to Erich’s home in Altadena, California.  The chassis had long since been discarded, but what remained was excellent.  The body was in great condition for being nearly 60 years old, and included all parts including the coveted hardtop and a toneau cover too.  How cool!

Let’s have a look at the Victress – a body without chassis after so many years.

Summary:

I started writing this story in 2012 – and “life” got in the way of my own plans until today – nearly summer in 2013.

Our good friend Jim Lattin and Glasspar G2 owner has since acquired the car and has placed the Victress on a custom chassis especially built for this car.  I think Jack Hilbig would definitely approve, and we’ll feature more about the restoration and completion of the “Jack Hilbig Victress S1A Roadster” in a future story here at Forgotten Fiberglass.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Victress Sports Cars

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Alden Jewell has done it again.

What an amazing number of car shows he must have visited in the 50s – some of the finest custom car, sports car, new car, and just plain great ‘ole car shows that California had to offer.  And better yet…he saved the programs from these shows, and he is sharing another gem from his collection with us today.  Thanks Alden

Today’s story focuses on the Vale Sports Car.  Vale Wright had debuted his car back in 1952.  Here it was two years later and the car was still headlining shows across the West Coast of California.  Pretty impressive.

The Vale sports car appeared at the 1954 Pacific International Motor Sports Show held by the Slonaker family.  This was the same family that brought us the famous “National Roadster Show” more commonly referred to as the “Oakland Roadster Show“.

This was quite a glamorous show and showcased some very special cars.  Let’s have a look at the “Welcome Message” posted at the opening of the program to all attendees so you can get a feel for the quality of the show back in 1954.

And away we go…

1954 Pacific International Motor Sports Show
Program:  “Welcome to The Show”
By: Mary Slonaker, Show Manager

 “Motor sports win for you greater power, performance, safety, economy, beauty, comfort and romance in your automobile!”  Rolphus H. Gainor.

The Pacific International Motor Sports Show brings to the United States that grand experience usually associated with Paris and London motor expositions.  Opportunity to compare, to see under one roof the glamour cars of America, Italy, Britain, France and Germany.

The Motor Sports Show can best be described in its theme—“glamour cars of the world.”  And these include the least expensive as well as the most expensive.  Look closely and you’ll see for yourself the many improvements yet to come in the “family sedan”.

Sports cars, from the magnificent Grand Prix road racer to the stock sports car built solely for street and highway use, are the features of this show.  For sports cars are the leaders among glamour cars because performance and safety highlight their construction.

And although the roadster predominates, more and more, sports car bodies are taking shape as coupes and sedans.  Thus it is that someday your own “family sedan” may be considered a sports car if and when it has the right characteristics under the hood and under the body.

The Pacific International Motor Sports Show provides you the unique opportunity to gain new appreciation of the automobile as something more than mere transportation.  Automotive transportation can be a thing of a glamour – it can be FUN to drive a car!

Welcome to the show.  We hope that by the time you leave the Exposition Building you too will have joined the ranks of the millions of motor sports fans all over the world.

Tell your friends – and come again next year!

Mary Slonaker
Show Manager

The program also had one page dedicated to the Vale sports car and a photo of it that I’ve not seen before.  Let’s see what they had to “show and tell” about this special car – a favorite of mine and good friend Marshall Foxworthy too

Vale Sports Has Fiberglass Body:

Vale Wright of Berkeley is a veteran sports car fan who now designs and builds his own cars.  Above, his entry in the show, built on an MG TC chassis, under 1500 cc, stock.  It has right hand drive and a Stewart Warner instrument panel.

Winner of many awards, this car placed third in a recent Portland Auto Dealers Association show competing with many foreign and American sports cars.  It won first place in the last International Sports Car Show in Oakland.

Wright builds his cars from a fiberglass mold which can be used over and over, with body changes as desired.  He has driven his cars in all the important racs…Pebble Beach, Golden Gate, Santa Clara and others.  The car pictured is in bright red and black upholster and has two tops, fiberglass and cloth.

Summary:

Interesting comments about the Vale Sports Car.  I’ve never seen a photo of it in “red” (the above photo still looks like the light-colored green it’s always shown in) and I am inclined to believe this was wishful thinking – along with the attribution of a cloth/soft top too.  By now, we’ve seen many photos and read many stories about the Vale, and I’ve not seen any reference to this color or a soft top.  “Dressing up the options” a bit in print was not uncommon, but research…as always…continues.

And perhaps we’ll find the car someday and learn the final word concerning the true history of the Vale.  That sure would be fun

From what I can tell, this may have been the first and last such show by this name - The Pacific International Motor Sports Show –  held by the Slonaker family.  This makes this a very special program, indeed, that Alden Jewell is sharing with us today, so many thanks again to Alden for his graciousness in sharing pieces from his literature collection with all of us here at Forgotten Fiberglass

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Vale Sports Cars

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Let’s work backwards in time.

Today, good friend Bill Hebal and his wife Kate own a cool special from the 1940s.  That’s right….from 1946 to be exact.  Wouldn’t you want to know more….and I did    In response, Bill provided the following detail:

Geoff,

Attached are pictures of the 1946 Reichenbach roadster. It was built by the Reichenbach Brothers and was commissioned to be a race car that could be driven on the street.

The fella I got it from (Carl Hawks) bought in 1949 from a Tucker dealer in Chicago (I have the original bill of sale). It was featured in Hot Rod November 1960. It has an all-aluminum body, steel tube frame and Ford flathead for power.

It’s a really fun car to drive and sure turns a lot of heads. It was at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in 2005.

Cheers, Bill

Let’s have a look at some of the photos Bill sent for review:

Wow!  Lots of new information here, so the first task in order was to find the article from Hot Rod Magazine in 1960.  Let’s see what it had to say about this very special car.

Hot Rod Meets Sports Car
Hot Rod Magazine: November, 1960

The story is told through photos and captions.  Click on each of the photos below to enlarge them on your screen and make it easier to review the caption.  Also of note….the article/captions state that in 1960 the original builder remained unknown.   This, of course, has changed over the years, and it’s now known that it was a dual-purpose race car / sport car – and an early one at that having been built in 1946.

Let’s have a look at the five captioned photos that appeared in Hot Rod Magazine back in 1960.

Summary:

So Bill Hebal is owner #3 of this car and what a great history it has.  It represents a time so early in postwar America – 1946.  A time when the shape, style, power, and design was all being determined and the Reichenbach brothers were dead center in the middle interpreting what was happening and showing what was possible at the highest level of “build” for their day.

We hope that we can convince Bill to feature the Reichenbach Special at the upcoming “Milwaukee Masterpiece Concours d’elegance” this August, 2013.  It would be the perfect addition to our class of early postwar Handcrafted Specials.

Perhaps Bill and Kate will let us know their intentions in the “comments area” below in our story.  I know we would be thrilled to see this car on the field  at Milwaukee (click here to review more information about the Milwaukee Masterpiece this August, 2013).

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  One-off Sports Cars / Sport Custom Cars

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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Small books were published throughout the 1950s by various automotive magazine publishers.  The largest producer of these books was Petersen Publishing – the organization that brought us Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and other such luminary magazines.  But Fawcett Books was not far behind.  In fact, it was actually one-year ahead.

Trend Books came out with their first book called “Custom Cars” in 1951, but it was Fawcett Books that came out with a book on cars called “Sports Cars and Hot Rods” one year earlier in 1950.  It was a race to produce these small booklets on various sports car, hot rod, and automotive topics, and these two companies would battle throughout the 50s to produce a wider and greater variety of booklets – booklets which we now treasure as a window into the times of building, driving, racing, and modifying your car in the ‘50s.

Take today’s article.  This article was from a series of interviews with Vince Gardner – one of the earliest designers of coachbuilt, handcrafted cars in the postwar era.  In the late 1940s, he designed and built a custom car modified from a Studebaker body and chassis known as the Gardner Studebaker.  Just a few short years later, he designed and built from scratch – with the help of Emil Deidt – a handcrafted sports car called the Gardner Vega.  Both can be seen below.

Gardner’s Custom Studebaker – Check Out That Cool Bubble Top!

Gardner’s Hand Crafted One-Off Vega

Today’s story is from Fawcett’s 1952 book on “How To Build Hot Rods” and features an extraordinary number of articles focused on building and designing your own hot rod – from scratch.  Nestled in among all these articles is an amazing find – a 10 page (yes….10 page!) article from Vince Gardner showing how he built his Gardner Studebaker in the 1940s and shows his work in progress – the Gardner Vega.

Throughout these 10 pages we see photo after photo and word after word on how these cars were built and – most importantly – how someone could design and build their own car with careful study of the skills necessary to do so.  Most interestingly, after he spends 9 pages discussing and showing how to design and build a car out of steel or aluminum.  Then, almost on the last page he then begins with the following words:

 “The best alternative, in my opinion, is to make the body of fiberglass, that super-durable plastic that can be molded in one piece.”

And for the next six paragraphs until the final word in the story, Vince Gardner discusses the advantages of doing in fiberglass – what he has labored years in doing in steel.  This article was published in 1952.  Since fiberglass sports cars were introduced in late 1951, no doubt what we are seeing here is the awareness of one designer and fabricator – going through what many people were thinking at the time, and that was the benefit of using fiberglass to design and build your own handcrafted car.

In this one article, we see the awareness shift to building one-off custom cars, sports cars, and concept cars out of fiberglass – the lightweight, strong “carbon-fiber” of its day.  The new “wonder-material.”  And for all of the reasons above and more, this article is worth the time to review in word and photo.

Go get ‘em gang!

Create Your Own Custom Body
How To Build Hot Rods
Fawcett Book #156, 1952
By Vincent E. Gardner as told to Louis Hochman

Vincent E. Gardner began his career as an automobile designer back in1936, working as a model builder on the Cord.  From there, he moved on to Briggs Manufacturing as a draftsman, then to Budd Manufacturing, where he started as a model builder and worked his way up to chief designer in the space of one year.  In 1943, he joined Studebaker as a designer.

The latter part of 1951, Vince left his job at Studebaker and went to California to design and build his own sports cars.  His plan is to someday manufacture a Fiberglas car body which will sell in kit form for about $1,000.  The body will be composed of interchangeable sections to provide customers with a variety of design possibilities, simply by ordering different combinations of body parts.  With this plan, he hopes to bring to the auto enthusiast a low-priced car body that can be fitted to any conventional chassis.

Vince Gardner is unique in that you have to go far to find a man of his background with the pioneering spirit to forsake the steady salary of a plush Detroit job and devote his time to designing and building cars on his own.–Ed.

If you’re anything like the average car owner, you no doubt dream of some day owning a flashy car that is the only one of its kind–a car that you yourself designed and built.  Maybe you’ve kept this dream in the background because you feel that you’re not qualified to design your own car, much less to build it yourself.  Such reasoning is pure pessimism, for if you have an ounce of imagination and originality, you can design your own car body, and you can do it with the same materials that the big Detroit companies use, namely, pencil, paper and clay.

Designing a car body doesn’t mean going overboard in the field of fantasy and creating a Buck Rogers spectacle designed to confuse the befuddled public as to the true purpose in life, unless that’s the direction in which your tastes jet.  You’ll have just as much fun, and a good deal more success if you stick closer to the more conventional by-paths of natty car designs.  Here’s the formula.

To begin with, a design usually starts with an idea.  Shapes take form in your mind long before you put them down on paper.  These shapes are usually inspired by a variety of influences.  They might be a combination of existing shapes–the fenders of one car, the hood and cowl of another, the rear end of a third, and so on.  Or some existing design that appeals to you might have inspired a similar, modified version.

If you find ideas hard to come by, study the designs of existing cars and figure out ways of changing certain features to suit your own individual tastes.  There’s no law that says you can’t improve on the other fellow’s baby, and you’ll be surprised to see how original your design will look.

As soon as your ideas begin to formulate, they should be sketched in either perspective drawings, or a series of flat and end views.  Small thumbnail sketches will do–just enough to give you a visual record of the idea.  The flat side view is usually enough to capture an idea.  Having decided on the general appearance of your car, the next step is to decide on the wheelbase and find a chassis to correspond–or choose a chassis and alter the wheelbase to suit.

To be attractive, a sporty car should be low-slung.  Therefore, another modification will be necessary.  The engine will have to be lowered and set back if the hood height at the cowl is to be less than 40 inches.

Rather than lower the engine, however, it would be advisable to alter the springs, both front and rear, and thereby lower the entire chassis three or four inches.  This latter change will give you a more satisfactory seating position by bringing the floor nearer to the ground.

Now comes the job of making an accurate three-view drawing showing the correct wheelbase, engine location, radiator location, windshield, steering wheel and ground clearance–and don’t forget the seating position!  Also remember the top, and be sure to provide plenty of headroom.  Most important considerations in a car of this type are comfortable seating, head room, clutch and brake pedal location, accelerator pedal location, windshield location, and visibility.  If you have a good comfortable seat and your visibility is right, you have a comfortable car to ride in.

Another thing you don’t want to overlook is cooling.  You can’t get away with just a little hole in front and expect the air to cool a great big radiator.

There’s some sort of formula for figuring the size hole required but I’ve yet to see such a formula work out every time in practice.  When I used to work in the designing department at Studebaker, the engineers would figure that they needed so many square inches of frontal area to cool a given radiator–so we’d give it to them.  They’d build a car accordingly, take it out on the proving grounds, run it up and down the hills, give it the old torture treatment, and bring it back boiling–not enough cooling?  So they’d cut the hole bigger.

The accurate three-view drawing should be made to either 1/8- or 1/4-in. scale on paper that is ruled off in squares, each line representing a distance of 10 in.  For a 1/8-in. scale, the graph lines should be 1 1/4 in. apart, while for a 1/4-in. scale, space your lines 2 1/2 in. apart.

Your scale drawing starts with a vertical line, marked “zero,” running straight down through the center of the front wheel.  Then, all subsequent vertical lines going from that point toward the rear of the car, are successively marked, 10, 20, 30, and so forth.  The vertical lines running from zero toward the front of the car are marked successively minus-10, minus-20, minus-30, and so on.  It’s a simple method and commonly used in the automobile business.  While accurately sketching in your design this way, you can allow for the required clearances.

Now comes the $64 question!  Having made an accurate set of scale drawings, how do you go about translating these two-dimensional sketches into three-dimensional forms?  The answer is to build a tiny model to the same scale as you made the drawings–not of balsa wood, or plywood, but of modeling clay.  Modeling clay, available at any art supply store, provides the ideal means of molding and forming the various shapes into an accurate scale model.

Start your clay model by packing the clay onto a rough-cut wooden block to which a set of plywood wheels of the correct scale representing the wheelbase have been nailed.  A simple set of modeling tools for working the clay can be made by welding short 1- to 2-in. lengths of hacksaw blade to forked metal rod handles as shown in the accompanying photos.  The stops of these blades can be sharpened to knife edges for smoothing the clay.  The sawtoothed edges are used for rough shaping.

As you work the clay up to the final shape of your car, you will find yourself making many changes in the design, due to your new perspective in seeing your idea take three-dimensional form.  Finally, your clay model is finished and you’ve decided that this is it!  Isn’t it a beauty!  Because you’ve made some inevitable changes in the clay model, it will be necessary to correct your original scale drawings.

This you do by cutting sections in the clay model about 10 in. apart and making cardboard templates of the shapes at these points.  The templates are then laid over the corresponding portions of the original scale drawings and the drawings are altered to match them wherever they vary.

A simple way to make these templates is to cut vertical lines down through the clay model exactly as the lines that run down through the scale drawings.  The spaces between these lines will represent distances of 10 in. on the full-scale car.  A handy guide for cutting these lines accurately consists of a length of heavy wood 3 in. wide, which is nailed to a base strip of plywood to form a perfect right angle.  With the plywood base held firmly down to the work table along side the clay model, a steel rule can be pressed against the flat surface of the vertical portion of the right angel guide and slid down along it to cut straight accurate lines into the clay model.

Since both sides of the car will be the same, the templates will have to be made of only one side of the car–either the right or the left side.  Therefore, the clay model can be bisected with a line running longitudinally along the middle of the top and this line can be used as a guide in making the templates.

The templates themselves are made by sinking thin sheets of cardboard into the lines cut in the clay then tracing the clay forms on the protruding portions, and later cutting away the cardboard up to the traced outline.  Each template should be identified by marking it with the number that corresponds to the line from which it was cut.

The next step is to enlarge these templates to full size by copying them onto a large sheet of paper that has been ruled off with 10-in. squares.  A projector large enough to take the 1/8-in. scale drawing or the small templates would be ideal for making the full-size enlarged templates.  However, in the absence of a suitable projector, the templates can  be enlarged simply by copying them onto the larger paper, following as accurately as possible the patterns as laid out on the squared-off graph.  This job will be easier if you take the large sheet of paper onto a large plywood panel.

After the templates have been copied over onto the larger scale, blacken the back of the large drawing with soft pencil and carbon-copy the enlarged templates onto sheets of  heavy cardboard to make full-sized templates for the final stages of construction.  If you want, you can use these full-scale templates to make a full-size working drawing of the car for a final check to see if everything is just as you want it.  A full-size drawing will often reveal details and angles that escape you in the small scale drawings and model.

Once you are satisfied that you have what you want, trace the large templates off onto wood (1/2-in. plywood is ideal) and cut the forms out on a bandsaw.  You don’t have to work too accurately in this sort of thing–just so you come fairly close.  After all, it’s not a precision piece of machinery that you’re building, just a guide for the metal man so he won’t have to use his imagination.

With your wooden forms cut out, the next step is to assemble them into a skeleton shape of the car.  The cut-out wooden shapes are spaced 10 in. apart to correspond with the sections of the model from which the respective templates were made.  Also, the entire wooden form is made in sections, each section representing a separate metal form.  This is because you have to form the body in sections which are later welded together to make the single-piece body.

As the metal sheets are shaped to fit over these wooden forms, they are left a little full, about 2 to 3 in. extra at the edges, so that they can be trimmed to the exact size and welded together.  This is done by laying the formed metal shape over its corresponding wooden form, scribing a line down the edge where it is to be joined to its adjacent section, and trimming away the excess metal beyond the scribed line.  After the adjacent section has received the same treatment, the two sections are butted together and welded to form a single piece.  Here, too, absolute accuracy is not a must.  Variances of 1/8 to even 1/4 in. won’t matter if the final result still appeals to the eye.

How many individual sections each portion of the car body is composed of depends upon the particular design.  The car, of course, is planned to fit the chassis–floor pan, hinge pillars, fire wall, gas tank, luggage compartment–all are planned according to where you intend to put everything.

Unless you can do all your own work and form the metal yourself, you’re going to find the building of a metal body pretty expensive.  Labor comes high–about $4.00 an hour, including overhead–and a lot of man-hours go into the making of a car.  The best alternative, in my opinion, is to make the body of Fiberglas, that super-durable plastic that can be molded in one piece.  I don’t intend to go into the technique of handling the material here, but I can give you a few helpful, money-saving hints.

The process of designing a body in Fiberglas is the same as that described for a metal body; that is, making the scale drawings, then the clay scale model, and enlarging the small templates to full size.  However, from this point on, you proceed a little differently in that, instead of building a wooden skeleton form, you actually build a full-scale clay model of the car, complete to the last detail, using a rough wood lath form underneath.  This clay model is then used to make the master mold from which the finished Fiberglas bodies are made.

The greatest item of expense here is the cost of the clay for the full-size model, which could easily come to a few hundred dollars; about 500 pounds of clay will be needed.  However, you can cut down considerably on this expense by sharing it with several other friends who also want to design and build their own car bodies.

First, you must all agree on the chassis and basic pattern of the car.  Then, you get together and chip in for enough clay to build one full-size model.  Say, one of the group has an idea and he builds his model first.  He makes his molds and he’s finished.

Now, suppose the next member wants his car to have a fin on the rear fender–so he adds a fin to the clay model.  If  he wants a different nose, he changes that too, right on the original full-scale clay model.  After he’s made all the changes he wants in the original design, he makes his molds and the clay model is then free for the third member to modify.

In this way, each member of the co-op team has a chance to design his own car body and use the same basic form to work on and pull his molds from.  It isn’t necessary to build a completely new full-scale model each time.  After all, once you’ve worked out the seating and visibility, you wouldn’t want to change that; all you’d want to change is a few shapes and forms of the external design.  So with this system, you can go ahead and build dozens of car bodies, making each one different.

So there you have it!  Use whatever method you like–but don’t say it can’t be done. 

Summary:

There you have it – the story of a fabulous designer who could move from concept to design to fabrication to completion with the best of them in the world.  And he wasn’t shy to use talent for metal fabrication such as the esteemed Emil Deidt – a coachbuilder of great postwar provenance.

There are so many reasons why this article is important for our research, and these include documenting the design and build process, showing and teaching others how it was done back in the day, and a realization – at ground zero – of when fiberglass was introduced as a viable product for building sports cars, custom cars, concept cars, and other cars.  This new wonder material – fiberglass – was ready, willing, and able to be used.  And our favorite designers and builders of the period took off in a flash with the same realization.

Perfect timing for a great read here at Forgotten Fiberglass!

And for those of you who wish to learn more about Vince Gardner, the man, and his career, be sure to check out the October 2007 issue of Collectible Automobile.   There’s a great biography of Vince Gardner and his history.

Hope you enjoyed the story, and until next time…

Glass on gang…

Geoff

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* Click on the following link to view all stories on:  Building Your Own Sports Car / One-Off Sports Cars / Must Reads / Sports Customs

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* New Feature: To post your comments and thoughts about this story, scroll down the page and post your information in the section titled “Leave A Reply.”  Your name and e-mail address will be required, but only your name will appear – not your e-mail address.

* Click here to visit the Forgotten Fiberglass Forums and post your thoughts about vintage fiberglass cars.

* Click here to review the “Forgotten Fiberglass Vision Statement” as well as our “Approach to Research”

* Click here to listen to our Podcast led by Todd Ruel of Gone Autos

* Click here to visit our Forgotten Fiberglass Facebook page

* Don’t Forget: We appreciate any and all donations to our Forgotten Fiberglass website.  Your donations help defray production costs.  To make a donation, look for the “Support Forgotten Fiberglass” box at the bottom right of our website and click on the word “Donate”.  All contributions help make “Forgotten Fiberglass” the best it can be.

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