Henry Ford's Soybean Car

[SeaBreeze]

You might blame Henry Ford and his hugely popular T-model for sparking our insatiable passion for cars and the environmental degradation it has brought, but did you know that Ford once tried to build a biodegradable car?

Henry Ford was born in a farm and spent his childhood working on his father’s farm. Although he despised farm work as a child, in the middle ages he became fascinated with the notion of merging farming with industry. Ford had a long-standing interest in plastics developed from agricultural products, particularly soybeans.

He cultivated a relationship with American agricultural scientist George Washington Carver and built a soybean laboratory in Greenfield Village, where he experimented with soy-based oils and plastics, which he began to use in his vehicles such as in gear shift knobs. But Ford had bigger dreams; he wanted to build a car almost entirely out of plastic. The result is the so-called “soybean car” which Ford debuted in 1941.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2022/03/henry-fords-soybean-car.html

 

[squatting dog]

You bet. Being a gear head, this car has always fascinated me.
Henry Ford showcased his ultimate product with the potential to have changed the environment, a car made entirely out of hemp and could run off hemp fuel as well as vegetable oil. The cars panels were molded under hydraulic pressure of 1,500-pound psi from a recipe that used 70 percent of cellulose fibers from wheat straw, hemp and sisal plus 30 percent resin binder. The only steel in the entire body was in the cars tubular welded frame. The body itself was 10X stronger than steel. Henry Ford was so confident on the strength of the panel that he took an axe to the show car. The axe, that would have cut through any steel panel simply bounced back.