Cars of the 1960'$ 53 



great deal better than a steel car, "but plastics will enable us to 

 build a better car at lower cost." 



Plastic bodies will be built in panels. In case of a wreck, 

 only the damaged panel would have to be replaced. In the 

 future, dealers may stock body panels as well as parts. You 

 can stop worrying about the usual crop of scratches and dents 

 that a car generally picks up in the course of a year's driving. 

 Plastic bodies can take punishment. A husky man smacked 

 the Ford plastic car with an ax and failed to dent it. For 

 another thing, the smooth, hard finish on your plastic car is 

 built in to stay forever. 



Molded plywood alternate layers of wood and plastic 

 baked into shape under pressure will give plastics a lot of 

 competition. Factories now are turning out molded-plywood 

 tails, wings, and fuselages for training planes, and fuselages 

 for bombers and cargo planes. The fuselage of Britain's De 

 Haviland twin-engined Mosquito bomber, which carries two 

 thousand pounds of bombs and has a range of three thousand 

 miles, is made of two layers of plywood with a center of balsa 

 sandwiched between them. It takes hours to plug bulletholes 

 in a metal plane, but a wooden Mosquito bomber can be 

 patched in a few minutes. 



Plastics and plastic plywood both will be challenged by 

 aluminum and magnesium alloys. These two metals are vital 

 in airplane construction. Wartime necessity has tremendously 

 expanded our output of aluminum and magnesium, and low- 

 ered their price so they will be available for low-cost cars. 

 In 1941, automobiles used an average of only seven pounds 

 of aluminum, while magnesium was, until a few years ago, a 

 structural curiosity. A lighter, but strong, automobile chassis 

 will be made from aluminum and magnesium alloys. In addi- 

 tion, welding will replace bolts and rivets in the construction 

 of the chassis. 



Some automotive engineers are confident that steel will not 



