Automakers are quite the innovators. From time to time, traditional metals, plastics, and glass were not enough for certain enthusiasts when making parts, and they turned their attention to... food products and their waste, as well as plants.
The most famous example is the rubber tree, which has been used for decades as a source of natural rubber for producing tires and seals. Sometimes, more exotic products are used: sugar cane and corn are used by some manufacturers to produce biopolymers for interior trim parts, while crushed eggshells and tomato skins can serve as an alternative to carbon black for making hoses, mounts, and bushings.
But the most unexpected option is the use of soybeans and other agricultural crops to produce plastic body panels. Especially when none other than the "king of the assembly line," Henry Ford, was involved with the "soybean car." Today, we will recall how the great American industrialist came to use soybeans, corn, wheat, hemp, and flax as materials for making car parts, and how this "food-based" story ended.
As is known, soy is a herbaceous plant of the legume family – one of the most common and valuable food crops in the world.
Soybeans are a rich source of high-quality protein, which many adherents of this product consume as a plant-based meat substitute. They are hardly eaten in their pure form, but are used to make tofu, soy meat, soy milk, and soy sauce. Soy products are beneficial for the cardiovascular system and help lower "bad" cholesterol levels. But what, it would seem, do cars have to do with this?
Henry Ford was born into a family of Irish immigrants living on a farm near Detroit, Michigan. That is why grains and legumes were not something mysterious to him, and the topic of agriculture was not terra ignota for the future automaker.
Moreover, Ford had already begun developing and producing Fordson tractors in the early 20th century, which became just as much a folk machine for farmers and agriculturalists as the famous "Tin Lizzie" – the Ford T.
At some point, he turned his attention to soybeans, seeing in them potential both as an alternative to conventional food products and as a possible material for making anything, including car parts.
Ford was interested in wood materials obtained through genetic engineering ("making wood lighter than growing it"), corn as a fuel source in the form of corn oil or ethanol, and the potential use of cotton.
As early as 1927, Ford teamed up with Thomas Edison and Harvey Samuel Firestone (each contributing $25,000) to create the Edison Botanical Research Corporation in Fort Myers, Florida, to search for a local source of rubber.
By 1929, Ford opened a research laboratory in Dearborn, whose main task was working on the application of soybeans for producing plastics.
Ford believed so strongly in this unusual product that during the Great Depression in 1934, at the "A Century of Progress" World's Fair in Chicago, Ford's pavilion became one of the most popular thanks to soybeans. He built an "Industrialized American Barn" and planted an entire field of soybeans around it. Inside the pavilion, visitors could watch as oil for engines was extracted from the beans on-site and soybean plastic for car parts was pressed.
Also, on August 17, 1934, the famous "Soybean Lunch" took place: a menu consisting entirely of soybeans was prepared for journalists, farmers, and guests. This included salted beans, crackers, puree, bread, and soy coffee with biscuits, pies, and candies – also made from soybeans, of course. Notably, Henry's suit also used soybean fibers.
He then stated that he planned to mass-produce steering wheels, lever handles, buttons, and even gears from soybeans, as well as oil, paint, soap, glue, and fuel!
And in the 1930s, soybean-based plastics were indeed used to make some interior parts and even automotive paint.
However, Henry did not stop there and enlisted the famous inventor George Washington Carver to create a "soybean car," whose body panels would be made of plastic produced from a mixture of agricultural crops. Eugene Turenne Gregory from Ford's design department was to oversee production. Ultimately, Ford was not satisfied with the proposed project and handed it over to the Soybean Laboratory in Greenfield Village, and then to Lowell E. Overly, who had an education in tool and die design. He was assisted by chemist Robert A. Boyer.
And in this grand "million-dollar swing," one could indeed feel the instinct of a great industrialist who understood that the Great Depression was hardly conducive to the use of expensive sheet metal. And if wood could be an excellent alternative to this material for body elements, why would plastic be worse?
Secondly, in the second half of the 1930s, the cold breath of another world war was becoming increasingly palpable, and the frenzied activity of the future Führer did not go unnoticed in Dearborn either.
It became increasingly obvious that an affordable material for body panels could become a real salvation for the automotive industry in the future.
It took seven years of searching and work to move from thoughts to results.
The finished prototype, tentatively named the Soybean Car, was presented after the start of World War II. The debut of the "soybean car," also known as the Hemp Body Car, took place in August 1941 at the Dearborn Days festival in Dearborn, Michigan. That same year, it was also shown at the Michigan State Fairgrounds.
Discussing the design of the prototype is a rather dubious exercise, as the exterior was secondary in this case. To be fair, it is worth admitting that for the very early 1940s, a two-box body without protruding fenders looked quite modern, if not avant-garde.
Overall, the Soybean Car looked like an unpretentious machine without any stylistic frills. Headlights, radiator grille, fairly large windows, bumpers – it had everything, so to speak. And although the prototype lacked the elegance of the production Fords of those years, the experimental model did not look shabby at all. And most importantly, it was the world's first car with a plastic body.
The New York Times reported that the car's body panels were made from a durable material derived from soybeans, wheat, and corn. One article claimed they were created using a chemical formula that included soybeans, wheat, hemp, and flax among many other ingredients. However, Lowell E. Overly, who played a key role in creating the car, stated that it was "soybean fiber in phenolic resin with formaldehyde used for impregnation."
According to Ford's idea, using such a material could not only mitigate the effect of metal shortages during the war but also make the car lighter, cheaper, and more durable.
The tubular frame, to which about fifteen plastic panels only about 6 mm thick were attached, was mounted on a chassis from a 1937 Ford V8.
The windows were made of Plexiglas instead of traditional glass. As a result, the curb weight compared to a conventional car was reduced by about 25-30% – from the usual 1100-1200 kg for such a car to less than 900 kg. This was expected to contribute not only to improved dynamics but also to fuel efficiency.
Ford himself claimed that such panels would be ten times stronger than conventional ones. Another innovation was grain ethanol as fuel instead of traditional gasoline.
In essence, despite the emphasis on agricultural crops, Ford, along with other enthusiasts, was inventing a material that, in its properties, was very similar to the post-war Duroplast used for making the panels of the famous East German compact car, the Trabant.
To demonstrate the strength of the promising material, Henry Ford struck the trunk lid several times with an axe, leaving no visible damage. True, the part was installed not on the soybean prototype, but on Ford's personal car, and a rubber pad was mounted on the edge of the "weapon." Nevertheless, the demonstration looked quite convincing, as the tool bounced off with great force.
The unusual project was written about in Popular Science, Modern Mechanix, and other publications. The reaction of the press, as well as the public, was mixed: for some, it was a symbol of the possible beginning of a new automotive era, while for others, it was merely an eccentricity of the auto industrialist.
Alas, the promising project did not receive further development: due to the outbreak of World War II with multiple theaters of operations on different continents, car production in the United States was significantly reduced, and Ford had no time for soybean research.
Let us not forget that after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US officially entered World War II. Production was converted to military needs, meaning the output of trucks, aircraft engines, and other military components.
Although the technical solutions of the Soybean Car were patented in 1942, by the end of the war, the idea had been forgotten, and the prototype itself, according to Lowell Overly, was destroyed by E. T. Gregory. In any case, its trail was lost during the war years, and it was, unfortunately, dismantled for parts or simply scrapped.
Other sources claim that Ford invested millions of dollars in research to develop a plastic car, but without result. He stated that he would "grow cars from the earth," but this never happened, although he had over 12,000 acres (4,900 hectares) of soybean fields for experiments.
Perhaps the reason was also that Ford himself was, to put it mildly, quite old by that decade and died in 1947 at the age of 83, having previously handed over the company presidency to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945.
Thus, the soybean car forever remained an idea of the great Henry that never saw serial production. However, already in the new century, the Ford Motor Company returned to the idea of using plant components and food waste. Today, headlight housings are made from bioplastic based on coffee husks (McDonald's waste). The Ford Bronco Sport became the first model where wiring harness clips are made entirely from ocean plastic waste. Ford's decorative engine covers contain up to 30% nylon from recycled carpets or bioplastic from tomato skins.
So, almost a century later, old man Ford could be proud of his historical legacy – his ideas not only remain relevant but have also found reflection in modern cars that bear his surname.
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