G2 (Glasspar)
| Glasspar G2 | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Glasspar |
| Production | 1950–1953 |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | Sports car |
| Body style | 2-door coupé 2-door roadster |
The Glasspar G2 was a sports car body first manufactured by Bill Tritt in 1949. It is no longer built today. It was the first production all-fiberglass sports car body built by an American fiberglass manufacturer. A few were built as complete cars (in limited numbers) but most were offered as a body, or body/chassis kit.
The Glasspar G2 was born in 1949 when Bill Tritt helped his friend, Air Force Major Ken Brooks, design a body for the hot rod Ken was building. The car consisted of a stripped down Willys Jeep chassis with a highly modified V8 engine mounted on it. Bill Tritt, at the time, was building small fiberglass boat hulls in his Costa Mesa, California, factory and he convinced Ken that fiberglass was the ideal material for the hot rod body.
Tritt made sketches of a body and, with Ken and his wife's approval, proceeded to make the body plug and mold for a low-slung, continental-style roadster. A year and a half later, with a great deal of trial and error, the body was finished, set on the chassis and christened the Brooks Boxer in mid 1951.
Bill Tritt had a keen interest in boats and cars. Before the World War II, he studied marine architecture and boat building. He worked for Douglas Aircraft's Production Planning and Illustration Departments during World War II, and by 1945 had built a number of catamaran sailboats. In 1947, John Green, a yachtsman friend, paid Tritt to design and build a racing sailboat in the twenty foot range. Fiberglass seemed the logical construction material, and Otto Bayer of Wizard Boats was enlisted as laminator. The boat was named the Green Dolphin, and four were built. This was Tritt's introduction to fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP). By 1947 he was building small fiberglass boats, and built the first ever fiberglass masts and spars for sailboats. This company became the Glasspar Company and moved to larger quarters in Santa Ana, California, in the early 1950s. By the mid-1950s, Glasspar was producing 15 to 20 percent of all fiberglass boats sold in the U.S.
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