Glass saver

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The Glasspar Company was an American wheelwright and manufacturer of bodies for cars and pleasure boats , which was based in Santa Ana (California) from at least 1950 to 1955 . The company was founded in 1945 by Bill Tritt and two partners who began building fiberglass sailboats in 1947 .

Products

cars

Glasspar was the first company in the United States to build bodies made of GRP on a larger scale . In 1950, Tritt first put a Jaguar- like body on a Willys Jeep that belonged to the wife of his friend Major Kenneth Brooks. The car was later bought by the resin manufacturer, the Naugatuck Chemical Division of the US Rubber Company, as an advertising medium for their new material Naugahyde . In 1953 the company also received an order to manufacture 100 car bodies for Kaiser Darrin .

In addition, the D-2 was brought out as a complete automobile . Various V8 engines from Ford and Mercury were mounted on an in-house manufactured chassis with a 2540 mm wheelbase . A roadster body made of GRP came on top . Of the US $ 950 vehicles, 250 were built.

In 1955, another roadster, the Ascot, was presented, styled in the style of the 1930s. The car had a wheelbase of 2388 mm and was powered by a Ford industrial engine with a displacement of 2819 cc. Its price was US $ 2,400.

There are different details about the construction time of the vehicles: 1950–1954, 1951–1955 or 1951–1958.

Boats

In the mid-1950s, Glasspar achieved a considerable market share with 15 to 20% of all GRP sport boats sold in the USA. The product range in the boat division included numerous models, including sail and motor boats from around 2.4 m (8 ft) to 7.6 m (25 ft) in length.

Some models were available in different equipment variants ( sport , club or standard without a name prefix).

An incomplete list of the models produced includes:

  • Sea Lion - 12 ' runabout
  • Dincat - 12 'sailing dinghy with a fiberglass mast
  • Dinkitten - 8 'sailing dinghy
  • Privateer - 20 'sailboat with unstayed GRP mast
  • Balboa Boat - 13 ft car roof boat
  • Superlight Boat - 10 'car roof boat
  • Marathon Boat - under -14 ft runabout
  • Lido Series - 14 ft runabout
  • Citation Boat - 16 ft runabout
  • Avalon Boat - 16 ft Runabout
  • G3 Boat - 14 ft water ski tow boat with patented hull
  • SuperG Boat - 16 ft water ski tow boat
  • Seafair Series - 18 ft cruiser
  • Flying V-175 - 17 ft cruiser
  • del Mar - 16 ft cabin cruiser
  • Tacoma - under -14 ft runabout
  • Ventura - 21 ft fishing cabin cruiser
  • Meridian 21 - 21 ft fishing cabin cruiser similar to the Ventura
  • Meridian 25 - 25 ft deep sea fishing boat

The development department also developed and built a 30 ft cabin boat with a flybridge . However, when the board of directors decided against series production of this model in 1960, Bill Tritt left the company that he had founded himself.

Eventually the company was sold to Larson Boat Works .

literature

  • Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 , chapter Glass saving.
  • George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Volume 2: G – O. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , pp. 628-629. (English)
  • John Gunnell: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1975. Krause Publications, Iola 2002, ISBN 0-87349-461-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 , chapter Glass saving.
  2. ^ John Gunnell: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1975. Krause Publications, Iola 2002, ISBN 0-87349-461-X .
  3. ↑ George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , pp. 628-629. (English)