Sunday 25th February 1945

The Scarab ‘Project Y’ prototype was completed by designer William B Stout and Owens-Corning Fibreglass officials R Games Slayter and Walter F Krause – the car is often cited as the world’s first fibre-glass bodied automobile. The sleek car made use of unit body construction and did not require a separate chassis. The experimental vehicle reportedly cost approximately $100,000 to engineer and build although the raw materials for the body were said to account for only $75 of the total. Kaiser-Frazer briefly considered manufacturing the car in series, but its projected $10,000 price would have severely restricted the market and this prototype remained the only example built.