February 7, 2017 • 48 mins
It's no secret that Henry Ford was a brilliant inventor – but he was also incredibly eccentric, and never afraid to experiment. But did he really build a car out of hemp? Listen in to learn the facts (and fiction) surrounding this rumor.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff works dot Com. I had
a welcome the car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. As always,
we are joined by our super producer, Dylan Fagan. We'll
see if a nickname pops up here. I think there
(00:23):
could be some fun one, because I think there can. Uh.
This is gonna be a little bit, a little bit different, uh,
in comparison to many of our other topics. We are
talking about a specific historical experiments, something maybe the corporate
world would call a big swing. Oh yeah, with a twist,
(00:44):
with one heck of a twist. I guess the best
way to say it, and not to not to bleed
over into too many other shows, but they get the
best way to say it is that conspiracies can occur
in any realm or discipline, and cars are no different.
And in our one of our other shows, you've been
(01:05):
a guest where you discussed some various cover ups or
skull duggery that occurred in the automotive world. Yeah, sure
we have. And you know I should ahead and plug
your own show because it's a great show, So go ahead.
Yeah stuff. They don't want you to know as our
show that applies critical thinking to conspiracy theories and you know,
fringe reports, and we get into some weird stuff. But
(01:27):
you might be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, how often in
these two seemingly vastly different shows find themselves on the
same page. Yeah, we talked about water powered cars and
what else we talk about. I think maybe some we
we had thrown around these ideas, so if they weren't episodes,
forgive me. But we talked about pavement that wouldn't wear out.
We talked about like maybe a carburetor that uh it
(01:49):
could be tuned to get you know, for cars to
get one miles per gallon back in the nineteen fifties
and sixties. Um, there's a lot of ideas that have
been thrown out there. I can't remember how many of
these we actually laid down the recording for though. The
trolley systems being bought out, that's right, Yeah, the trolley
car scandal. Yeah no, uh, I believe that was GM. Right, Yeah,
that was GM, and they did get found guilty in court,
(02:12):
and uh and and a bunch of other oil companies. Right,
But that's that's the real thing that really happened yeah,
that really happened. Um, what are some of the other
one other weird ones that are tied into this? Did
we did? Have we covered? I don't even know if
we should touch on this or not. The city, Oh,
the entire city. We may have mentioned it, but it's definitely.
(02:33):
It's definitely. And uh, you did a piece on it
for the history folks. I did, Yeah, but it was
way back in two thousand twelve. Not that anything's changed
right with it. But this is all stuff we're gonna
touch on today. Yeah, and that show is stuff you
missed in history class. You can, if you are an
intrepid investigator, you can you can find the episode we're
talking about. This is you know, I feel like so
(02:54):
far I'm walking this delicate balance. I don't know what
you want me to reveal yet or not, because there
are some stuff to reveal, you know, during this podcast.
So I feel like I'm kind of on the line here.
So let's let's do this. How about we just jump
right into it. Alright, let's start this episode and uh,
and I'll try not to open my big mouth. And
if I do, people'll cut it out. Maybe we won't.
May we'll leave it in and that'll be the reveal.
(03:15):
Oh but it'll be It'll be perfect, because this is
a pretty strange and exciting thing. Because of all these
car related conspiracies or cover up allegations that we have named,
ladies and gentlemen, we have yet to touch on one
one theory that we have never addressed in all the
years we've been doing car stuff, and that is the
(03:36):
story that as World War Two loomed on the horizon,
the legendary automotive tycoon Henry Ford proposed and built a
radical new vehicle that he thought would change the state
of manufacturing forever, the Hemp car, a car entirely built
out of hemp. Right. So, I mean, I guess we're
talking about marijuana, right. I mean, it's sort of if
(03:58):
there's a difference, and I think you probably know the
difference between hamp and marijuana. Right. So when we first
learned of this interesting anomaly here, or this interesting legend, right,
the my initial reaction was, well, Henry Ford's an eccentric individual,
(04:18):
so if someone were to try to do that, I
could absolutely see him doing it. And when we ran
into this, you know, we found it on these uh
less than reputable websites for instance, and one of the
things that you might envision is somebody who is you know,
(04:39):
like a stoner who was going, yeah, man, they're covering
up you know, like how useful marijuana is and stuff
like that. But there is, uh there there are some
interesting differences between the kind of hemp that would be
involved in this project and the kind of uh brug
(04:59):
that would smoke, even though they're the same species. And
playing into this before you begin your description of the
two is that Ford has kind of a history of,
I guess, experimenting with other materials for for um, you know,
the purposes that he needed. So let's say the Spanish
moss for the packing of the the seat instead of
the fiber filled stuff, and that you know, kind of
(05:22):
backfire on him as well. Um, but that's like one
early early example that I can think of. So there's
a couple of those, and then even into modern day.
So if you're you're looking at this, you know as history,
which we are today, um, modern day, you know that
Ford is experimenting with a lot of different materials to
make you know, new types of plastics and body materials
and and make things stronger and lighter, etcetera. So there's
(05:44):
there's a little bit of something in the back of
your head that lets you think like, yeah, this, this
could be a thing. He could have tried to build
an entire car made out of hemp, right right, At
first it sounds crazy, but then there's that moment, the
moment of reflection, What do you think, Wow, Like he's
a crazy bastard. Day. So when I say that lovingly, yes, yes,
with uh no shortage of immense respect of course, which
(06:08):
Scott calling someone a bastard is about the highest compliments.
We have to beat that or we have to get
that out of their hand. It'll it'll just sound worse
if you beep it. So okay. So usually when people
say hemp, what they're talking about our strains of what's
called cannabis sativa that have been bred specifically for fiber,
(06:28):
and this fiber could be used in clothing and construction,
to make oils, other substances. That the main point is
it doesn't have a large amount of th HC, so
it doesn't create that feeling people have of being high
after they consume marijuana. Now, the other stuff, pot weed,
t Uncle Milroy's elbow medicine, whatever you wanna call it
(06:51):
that's too long for Dylan's nickname. By the way, Dylan,
Uncle Milroy faked not bad. But but you know, whatever
people call it, that's just a slang term used to
describe the strains of essentially the same plant that are
specifically bred for these um resinous clans and lee and
(07:11):
these leaves or buds that contain a lot of th HC. Okay,
so you handed me a note earlier that said that
the difference between these two is really semantic, really um okay,
So not only hemp and pot come from the same genus,
but they're the same species, but they're bread for different purposes. Really,
so one is bread for more of a um well,
(07:33):
I guess material science type type application, you know, with
with fibers that they could be woven into rope or cloth.
We see, you know, at all these music festivals you
find bags and uh sandals and things that you know
have been woven from hemp, and and of course along
with that goes the speech that you know, this is
a fiber, this is a plant that should be you know,
planted on every available space that we have. You know,
(07:55):
it should be everybody should be growing this because it's
so useful for so many things, right, and there is
an agricultural argument, a very old agricultural argument that's been
going on. But there's also when we talk about the
semantic stuff, it also takes us into the legal world,
which gets murky very very quickly because here in the
United States, uh, there are multiple state level definitions of
(08:19):
what is or isn't a legal use of this species. Yeah,
and I'll be honest with you, at this point, at
this point in our history, I'm lost as to where
it's it's legal, where it's not legal, Who can grow,
and how much you can grow, how much you can carry,
how much all that stuff. I just I completely have
lost track. Early on, it was easy enough that you know,
Colorado could do this, you know, and and their stores
(08:40):
and you know that that was that was about it,
and then it's spread from there. I think I think
Colorado is the first. But um, that's that's again, that's
the more recreational use type stuff that we're talking about, exactly.
And so as the US has been moving away from
marijuana prohibition, states are scrambling in a relatively non unified
(09:02):
effort to figure out definitions of what would count as marijuana.
The drug and what we count as hemp the agricultural product,
and that phrase is very important, not just to us,
but to Henry Ford. So it's no secret that the
federal government for a very long time opposed products with
hemp components due to the bad image, the association with marijuana.
(09:26):
And you can kind of see where they're coming from,
because it would be if there's a thing that can
also be a drug, or you can make rope with
it and maybe a car who knows, well, we know,
and we'll tell you in a little bit. But it's
it becomes very difficult from a legal standpoint, from law
(09:49):
enforcement standpoint, to keep your eye on every sparrow pot
grower wise, and I can check every level of THHC
from every crop that is is being grown out there, right.
And then there are a lot of people who, as
you said, champion the idea of him and tell these
stories like, oh, George Washington farmed it, and so it
(10:10):
has a million uses and it's true it does. Yeah, well,
and what about what about all the great rock music
and stand up comedy, Yeah, and artists, you know, a
lot of art would not be created without without jazz cigarettes.
That was my favorite one. I learned, uh for stoner
food and for that matter, what about the cars. When
(10:34):
we get into this, we have to start out by saying,
there is so much misinformation out there about Henry Ford. Yeah,
he's a living legend. Well, he was a larger than
life figure who became a legend after after he passed away,
a brilliant man who was an acolyte of Thomas Edison,
who is a well, I guess I'll go out and
(10:56):
say it, thom Essen's a bit of a stone cold bastard.
That's too times in one episode have to bump us
up to we might have to It's okay, we'll try
to back that down. How about that. We'll try to
back that. Keep it, keep it. And as we discussed before,
it's speculated that he even played some part in the
creation of what we refer to as the weekend. The weekend, Oh,
(11:18):
that's right, we had about how he created the weekend
so he can get more productivity. Well, anyways, there's a
there's a whole story behind it's pretty interesting. So he
could get some customers, yeah, his own people that didn't
have time to buy cars. But also he you know,
wasn't imperfect person by any means. Uh, he had some
(11:39):
he had some very uh he had some very strict,
uncompromising standards. And sometimes, of course he could be a
little bit of a loon. And he's we've documented, has
we've documented. Uh, So of course when we hear the story,
we think, oh, that makes sense. This guy is uber
(11:59):
bonker as at times. Yeah, And again here we're talking
about the town. Here's the town that I was mentioning before.
And I know we're not letting out any secrets here yet,
but it's part of the story. So if you want
to think about like one of his craziest it's not
adventures but ventures before at Landia. And the story for
Landy is fascinating, it really is. It's it's really, really,
(12:19):
really interesting. It started around it was abandoned by nineteen
thirty four, so in that short time I kind of
had to give up on this dream. But the idea
was he's gonna employ I think it was in Brazil, right,
it's an it's off a river in Brazil. It's in
the Amazon, Yeah, and it's just this desolate area that
he was hoping to employ ten thousand people in the
(12:40):
I guess it would be the American rubber industry really
in a way. I mean, this would be like a
remote plant that would produce this raw material for him
to use in his factories that he would need for
auto production. It's like a rubber plantation meets and idealized
Norman Rockwell esque. Yeah, it never really got off the ground.
And again Stuffy missed in History Class did a full
(13:02):
episode on this back in two thousand ten, and then
I joined them for a kind of a guest host
spot in two thousand twelve where we talked about Ford himself,
and of course for Landia came up at some point,
and that during that show. It was a two part episode. Um,
I think I think all thanks Ben, I think that,
um in the second part is where we discussed ford Landia,
but I could be wrong. Maybe part one. Well my
(13:25):
favorite part about ford Landia because it does sound interesting
and maybe a little bit self important, right to name
it ford Landia, but I think you've earned that right
if you're building a town in the Amazon. The thing
that makes it weird is that he forced the people
(13:46):
who lived there, the employees and their families two engage
in this his idea of what the ideal American small
town should be like, so it's a dry town, no drinking. Uh,
there was a baseball team. People had certain codes of
dress they were expected to adhere to. It was like
(14:07):
you know that movie The Stepford Wives was trying to
create like a Stepford existence. This this all plays back
into where he was born. I think he's born out
in the country, way out in the country somewhere. And um,
he later had great guilt over his own invention. He
felt that he had somehow destroyed something that he held
(14:27):
so close to his heart by allowing um, well, I
don't know the best way to say this. I'll have
to go back and listen to the way that we
framed this before. But he came from this little um
bucolic area Greenfield Township, Greenfield Township, Okay, And then it
moved to the city to do his work in Dearborn,
you know, etcetera. And along the way a lot of
different there were a lot of steps along the way,
(14:48):
but ended up in the city and then realized that
there's this pristine, beautiful countryside out there that he was
then allowing people from the city to travel to in
their in their cars that were spewing um, you know,
Lutant's really right. And he had this this this guilt
that he had created a machine that was going to
somehow um sully, that that that area was going to
(15:09):
gonna make it, you know, something not as pure as
it was prior to you know, back when he was
a kid. I guess right at times they were changing, yea,
So he had this strange like, you know, I did this,
but I'm also guilty of this. Yeah, And it kind
of makes sense that he was trying to recreate that
and keep it pristine, keep it you know, keep it
clean there, I guess. And I think they even had
rules like no dancing, and it was very it was
(15:30):
very puritan. I think, you know, that's the that's kind
of the general focus of this whole town. And that
sounds kind of like a set of rules that I'm
just my cynicism is coming out here, Scott. But often
when people make those sorts of rules, it's because it's
very easy to make rules that you don't have to obey.
(15:51):
I'm not saying that Henry Ford was out, you know,
drinking all day and dancing all night, but I'm saying
he didn't live in ford Landy. No, he didn't but
I honestly believe that this character was somebody who probably
didn't drink, probably really like what wasn't a you know,
go late, you know, get get to bed late in
the evening and party kind of guy. I think he
(16:12):
was a you know, early to bed, early to rise
guy who was a hard worker, industrious. He had some
you know again, some bonker's views of the world. Um
and again all this is all of this, everything and
and much much more by the way, that we were
not discussing here today. All this plays into the idea that, yeah,
it's possible that this character could have decided he was
(16:33):
going to build a HEMP car, a car made entirely
out of him. And that's the question. Did he really
make a car entirely out of himp? We'll tell you
the answer after a word from our sponsor. Oh, Ben,
(16:55):
you left us with a real cliffhanger here. So what
so what really happened? All right? Well, as a gentleman,
you can scoop back from the edge and continue to
use the rest of your seat. The answer is this, No, No,
he did not make a car entirely out of him.
It's a bummer, right, but sort of That's the that's yeah,
(17:17):
that's the truth. Well, first, just to be clear, you
can't make an entire car out of him. You know,
you have rubber for tires, you have an engine that
needs to be built with something that is not him. Sure, yeah, yeah,
there's of course metal and rubber components, and and of
(17:38):
course there's all the fluids and stuff that would have
to be somehow contained, and you can't do that in
something mad, right, And I think most people know that.
I just want to establish so well, of course, yeah,
that's the that's logical. But so what we're talking about
really is the body shell out of I said that weird,
the body shell that was made out of that's the
emphasis on the wrong salabl thing, right, So, so mad
(18:00):
he made he made the bodyshell out of hemp was
the the claim that the claim. But what really happened
was he made it out of an entirely different material altogether.
And what was that soybeans. So there is a grain
of truth in this story. He did make what people
called a soybean car, and it may have actually contained
(18:25):
some amount of hemp. This is not just a story
made from thin air. So it's a mixture, right, because
because soybeans that they have and if you look at
the chemical makeup of a soybean, I had it some
here somewhere here, But there's a there's a breakdown of
how much protein is there, how much soluble soluble fiber,
unsoluble fiber, and just how much how moisture all that
(18:46):
there's oils involved. Um, So, soybeans themselves can't make what
we're talking about here. This is a this is a
plastic product that they made. And plastics. If you think
back to when this was happening, which would have been
the late nineteen thirties, early that was a relatively new thing. Yeah,
it was. It was new thing. People were still figuring
(19:07):
it out. We hadn't yet reached that phase where do
you remember the movie The Graduate. Yes, isn't there a
conversation in the Graduate somewhere where this guy's like plastics,
my boy. They were still new. So we weren't even
at that stage where you know, your your relatives or
some family friend will tip you off, you know. But
(19:29):
we're at the stage where the early adopters are beginning
to understand just how far plastic can go as a technology.
And Henry Ford was very much a a progress oriented person,
the great experiment er. He had no problem dismissing the
status quoes of his day, especially if he felt they
(19:50):
were limiting progress. So let's go to where Scott Scott started.
Here the late nineteen thirties. He saw several problems is
looming on the horizon one steel had at the time,
some some real issues, some limit limitations as a building
material for automobiles, converting order to steel, complex operation. And also,
(20:15):
you know, he has to work with other companies, which
is not always his favorite thing. No, that's why he
builds his own companies to supply his company or his factories.
And he beat So he began thinking what else? What
else could I do? What are alternative materials? Could you
build his car with something else? So here's what happened
(20:35):
in late nineteen thirties. I guess Henry visited or he
made it, made a visit to his own village that
he created, you know, to to train you know, um
prospective engineers and designers and all that he had. This
place it was like a tech school almost really, and
it was the Deerfield Village Trade School. And this is
where he learned about a crop that they were experimenting
(20:56):
with at the time, which was, of course something that
was kind of obscure, are an irrelevant in the West
at the time, which it was soybeans, right, people didn't
know very much about soybeans. The average American citizen wouldn't.
Henry Ford, however, became obsessed. Man. He loved soybeans. He
was probably one of the first Americans to drink soy
(21:18):
milk on a regular basis. Which we're just going to
add to more of our strange facts about Henry Ford.
We should really, maybe we should just make a book
of this. He had a lunch at the ninety four
World's Fair where he served at all soy menu. We're
talking soy crackers, soy cheese, soy milk, straight up soy
beans and so on, and not just that. I've got
(21:40):
one a little surprise for you here. What's that. This
is a little bit later in the in the story,
but I'm gonna show you a picture of him. It's
a famous picture. He's he's celebrating. He is celebrating his
his birthday in seventy eight birthday. So let's jumping ahead
a little bit, but we'll come back in time. He's
wearing this this kind of light colored suit and he's
sitting on a bale of hey out in the field.
(22:02):
That's a soybean suit, a soybeans suits, a suit made
out of soybeans. So this guy is eating soybeans, he's
drinking soybean milk. He's wearing a suit made of soybeans.
He's all in. He's all in this right. And it's
only a few years after he learned about it. But
he is a soybean fan. He probably had you know,
banners in his room that said soybeans raw or whatever.
You are so excited about it. And uh, and he's
(22:24):
learning about the stuff from these these young engineers and
designers and technicians that are working on these and these
labs in this place that he has created for them
to eventually come to work for him. And that's so strange.
That suit is blowing me away. Soybean suit. It's an
iconic photo. I mean, you could look it up and
if you just look up Ford Soybeans suit one you'll
(22:45):
find it. It's a it's a funny photo. And you
see him in that suit a lot. I mean, I
wonder if you have many was he wear all soy clothes?
You know, I would I would guess that this is
probably one of a kind. I would I would think,
how would you? I'm interested to learn about the process there. Well,
this even proves This proves the point even further because
he believed in the versatility of soybeans and he didn't
(23:08):
think it needs to be limited solely to foods. In
hopes of building a cheaper, more durable, and lighter car,
he turned to the soybean and he originally enlisted the
help of a stylist named Et Gregory. Remember that name, folks,
It comes up later. Yeah, that's right. And uh so,
so this project, the project goes on right now. He's
(23:28):
kind of helping him develop this thing, but he's reportably
dissatisfied with the work that he produced on this team,
so he said he's going to handle this off to
another guy. His name is Lowell E. Overly, and his
background he had a background prior to working in Ford
Soybean Library Library Laboratory with a with a tool and
(23:49):
diet design as a tool and die designer. So he's
a tool and die guy. But he's brought in to
work on this soybean project. So that's kind of an
unusual mix for him. Yeah, probably haven't found the right
guy yet. There's another guy if they need to kind
of tap into his, his ideas, his resources for this project. Right.
And one thing that Overly did very well, which is
a skill that not a lot, not that more people
(24:11):
should have that we can all find useful, is Overly said, well,
you know what, I'm not an expert. I'm not going
to be pretend to be the expert at this part.
So let me find someone who knows the business of chemistry.
And you found a chemist named Robert A. Boyer. And
Boyer is the real, I guess, the real heroic figure
(24:32):
in our story. Yeah, and I've got a little bit
of a tie into this guy as some a little
bit of personal knowledge that just a little bit we
talked about this off area, not a lot. But tell
you what, let's take a word from our sponsor right
now and we'll come back with and we're back. Scott
(24:56):
gotta keep stop pushing people to the edge of their
seats to well, this is a distant at best, you know,
degrees of Henry Ford. For me, it's because as close
as I can get, really, I suppose for a short
while and uh, you know, several year. I'd say several
years really in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.
My mom dated a guy she's divorced. She dated a
(25:18):
guy who was Lee I Cocas pilot for Chrysler at
the time. When he was he was like a you know,
the Gulf Stream jet pilot or whatever. The guy's name
was Thomas Boyer. And Thomas Boyer is the son of
Robert A. Boyer, this chemist that worked with Henry Ford.
And so I heard of this way back in the
nineteen eighties when he was talking about his dad, because
(25:39):
his dad was still around at the time. His father
passed away in nine This Robert Boyer did the chemist. Um,
so he was still around when I was talking with him. Um.
And we had gone to the Henry Ford, which is
a museum Aarontown, the Henry Ford, and there were I
think it was a film strip that had him, this
guy Thomas Boyer on Henry Ford's lap on SMUs Day,
(26:00):
like a film bizarre. He's like, that's me. That's that.
He had no idea it was going to be there,
but his family was invited because Henry Ford had kind
of taken this guy under his wing. This is this Robert,
this Robert Boyer and of course you know, being his family.
Of course he was invited to some of the Ford
family functions and holidays and things like that at the
at the Ford mansion. And this guy was pretty fascinating.
(26:21):
He had things like you know, food patents and on preservatives,
and he had the patent on bacos, which are those
bacon bits that you shake on on your salad. Uh,
you know they're not real bacon. Just an interesting character
all around, but he was. He was taken in by
Ford because he had what Ford called a keen active
mind when he when he first met him as a
as a youngster in this in this deer Field village place. Um.
(26:45):
But he brought him in and let him work closely
with him on the soybean project because he felt he
was the one that could do it, and he did.
He ended up making um what we know is like
the plastic panels for automobiles. Yeah, the Soybean car was
unveiled by Henry Ford on August thirteenth, nineteen forty one,
at a community festival called Dearborn Days. Uh. Ford was
(27:07):
very active in this local community stuff. And again can
I interrupt police. There's there's more iconic photos that you
need to see here, because this is one of Henry
Ford that we've talked about in the past. Him swinging
an axe head at the trunk of a car which
doesn't leave a dent. That was the Soybean car. That's unbelievable. So,
(27:29):
you know in the eighties when we were kind of like,
you know, remarking how incredible it was that these Saturn
cars could have a shopping car bump into the door.
And there remember their their their television commercials, they were
a lot of there were a lot of things like
that happening to Saturn car doors in these commercials where
they would you know, flex in and then flex out. No,
no damage done, right, And it was supposedly revolutionary. But
(27:50):
here's Ford doing it back in ninety one. So Henry
was on top of things and uh and probably just
at the right time too, but they didn't know it right,
because not everyone is that attuned to the future. You know,
this guy really does have his finger on the pulse.
Let's talk a little bit about the actual car. So
(28:11):
it has a frame, it's made of tubular steel as
fourteen of these plastic panels attached to it. The car
weighs two thousand pounds, which makes it a thousand pounds
lighter than a steel car. The plastic window, it's the
windows are plastic. It has a sixty horsepower for flathead
(28:32):
v A. And the thing about those plastic panels, this
is this is interesting, Scott. We know it was called
a soybean car. They would have called it a hemp
car if hemp was the biggest ingredient. But we do
not know the exact ingredients of these plastic panels because
today no record of the formula exists. Yeah, and you
(28:53):
know what else, they can't they can't go back and
somehow determine what was in those panels, you know, via chemistry,
because someone destroyed the plastic car. Right, so it's an
interesting twist on this whole thing. Right, So after they went,
they were on display, you know, they were revealed it
what was that the dearborn days or whatever he said there?
And then also the Michigan State Fair it made another
(29:14):
appearance there, the only two appearances. So that's the only two.
So after that Michigan State Fair appearance, the car disappeared
and was destroyed. It was and this is not like
you know, something we're making. It was just it was destroyed,
and we know it was destroyed. But the person that
destroyed it, that's that's maybe another little twist on this
whole thing. So according to Overly, the toolmaker who was
(29:35):
taking over in contacted Boyer the car. The person who
ordered the soybeans car cars destruction was Et Gregory, the
stylist who originally had the project. So the guy that
the project was taken away from him, I guess if
you want to say twice, it was taken away twice. Uh,
it was taken away the first time because he wasn't
quite cutting it. He went to Overly, and then from
(29:57):
Overly it went on to Boyer, and then Gregory probably
still had a little bit of sour grapes about the
whole thing, and I decided to just destroy it. I mean,
why why would you not hang onto something like that,
or why would you not at least, uh maintain the formula,
because this is a proven winner. This is something that
that they could have kind of held their back pocket,
even if not right now, but you know, let's bring
us out later. And I tell you, whenever they displayed
(30:20):
this thing, whenever they swung that axt at that car
and it didn't dent. And they jumped on the panel
and it didn't dent. It was it was remarkable this product.
People were astounded, you know, the probably went crazy. And
even if it was just a novelty, it would be
even if you know, the specifics of the material science
made it impractical to produce or something, then it would
(30:40):
still be a great thing to put in a museum.
I feel, like Indiana Jones, it belongs in a museum.
You had, like in a big crate where it's huge
music like storage area, you know. Yeah, but you know,
here's the thing, like if they could only have a
piece of that remaining, they could they could analyze what's
in there and figure out how much of that was hawybean,
how much was hemp, how much was other material you
know of types of fiber they used or or whatever.
(31:02):
I mean, it's an interesting product, really, and I wish
they had I wish they had taken the time to
keep a sample of it, or at least, you know,
a better search for the formula that was created by
Robert Boyer there. Yeah, you know, there might be something
there in his notes from his estate or there might
be something, uh there, there might be something out there,
you ever know, maybe passed on to his son Thomas.
(31:25):
Maybe maybe you should I should re establish that context.
I should right back through. Would be a weird letter,
my friend. That would be like I, hey, remember me
from thirty years ago. So okay, here's one thing we
can do though. We can explore the speculation people have
about the formula. So you'll see some articles that claim
(31:45):
the formula for these miracle plastic panels contained many ingredients,
including soybeans, wheat, flax, and wait for it, I'm kidding hemp.
Uh So, the man who was instrumental in creating the
car loll overly claims that this was sweeping fiber in
(32:07):
a phenolic resin with formaldehyde used in the impregnation. However,
it's possible that only Boyer had the real scoop on
the ingredients. Now I have a question for you. Is
it possible that the the cloth backing for use for this,
because it had to be it was, it was impregnated
um into a cloth. Is that right? That could have been?
It could have been all hemp. You know, that's an
(32:29):
interesting point, Scott. It might not have had it been
in the chemical makeup of the actual plastic itself. It
could have been that the fabric that that it was
that was built on. I suppose that could have been
the hemp you know, element to this whole thing. I
just now thought of that that instead of being part
of the mixture, it's the base material. That's a you
know what, That's a very good idea. I don't know. Well,
(32:51):
I guess we'll never know. Yes, unfortunately we will. We
will never know. But the good news there the silver
lining on the cloud for those uh, those of us
out in the audience are out in the world who
really want there to be some kind of truth to
the hemp car story. You can hold on to that part.
It might be a hemp assisted car. Hemp assisted Okay,
(33:17):
I like it. That sounds like a heck of a
way to get pulled over. Well, uh so, the big
question then, one of our final questions then is if
this stuff was cool, if as we said, it really
did work, and in that it did the stuff Henry
Ford wanted it to do, then what happened? Why are
(33:39):
why are you not driving and listening to this podcast
in a soy being car right now? Well, we have
better alternative now for plastic, right, I mean, plastic technology
moved on from that point. This is the early early days,
I believe. I think I think this is the right answer, right,
because it seems like, uh, you know, this is the
first thing where we found like, okay, it has the
right chemical you know, composure to to make a way.
(34:02):
You know, I'm now chemist by any means, obviously we
can just no, no, We've determined that throughout this whole podcast.
I'm no chemist, but but it seems like this was sure,
this is a great starting point. But of course everything's
gonna advance, and we're talking about decades and decades and
decades of advancement before we saw some real reliable plastic
material that could be used in exterior and the exterior
(34:23):
of automobiles that would have the properties that we needed.
Resilient um or even um impregnatible materials, is that the
right word. I think that that you can impregnate with
color so that you know, they might not have to
receive as many layers of paint or different types of
paint them or um. You know that you could adhere
um different types of trim and molding to them and
(34:45):
not have that break at the same time, you know
that they kind of match the flexibility of that material.
There's another point to that. I don't know if we
mentioned this U temperature variation. Oh yeah, that's a huge way. Yeah.
How many old Pontiacs did we with those? You know,
those huge side trim is underneath I think it was
the old Bonnavilles maybe, Um, that would have just wavy
(35:08):
material on the side from about the middle point of
the driver door and passenger door down all the way
to the ground. And it was just like it. It
just couldn't. Um, it couldn't withstand the heat of it,
let's say, being in the reflection of a building, or
it couldn't stand the uh, you know, the cold and
then the heat. So let's say that would be extremely
cold in the north and uh, you know, twenty below
(35:29):
or whatever, and then in the summertime it's ten. It's
enough to create a plastic that can stand up to that. Yeah,
And it's even tougher when we consider that it's not
just a matter of whether the material remains stable temperature wise,
many plastics that would be otherwise fine, or several plastics
(35:49):
that would be otherwise fine, can't be included in these
sorts of endeavors or projects, because when the heat rises,
they emit dangerous chemicals. You know what I'm mean. Yeah,
I get you a new car smell that's slowly killing you.
It's not so much just holding shape. It's also that
it's giving off stuff that you don't necessarily want around you,
(36:09):
you know, as your body. I guess it would be
dangerous high degree of v O c s and those
are those are responsible in some way for the new
car smell, which a lot of people love. And I'm
I'm exaggerated when I say it's slowly killing you. You
would have to lock yourself in a car and huff
a lot of that for it to harm you, probably
(36:30):
right in the heat of summer too. Yeah, I mean
so that it's get off gas and as much as possible, right,
it would be. You don't want to do that. It
would be a really elaborate and weird experiment, and you
would eventually have to explain yourself to someone. There is
another factor, what's that in the in the soy Bean
Car we tangentially mentioned it in the beginning here. The
(36:55):
anticipation of an upcoming loss of steel resources, which and
Reford you know, had a spider sense about did occur.
But it was even worse than he imagined, because with
the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of one same
just a few months after the unveiling of the Soybean Car,
the US was drawn into World War two. Domestic auto
(37:17):
production Uh real, well, I guess what they say nowadays
is pivoted. Well, it halted, really, yeah, its all pivoted. Sure,
I mean because they produced other things. They didn't just
stop and that's it. Uh, they produced other things, tanks
and airplanes and you know, any kind of artillery that
they needed. It's just it was a different direction for
the for the country at that time. And of course
(37:37):
all the metal was being you know, resourced for that effort.
So um, you know this, that's that this would have
been perfect timing for them to use this type of
material for their bodies after World War Two. I don't
know why it didn't catch on immediately after World War Two. Well,
when the dust settled, Uh, it seemed that people had
(38:01):
just plumb forgot about it. Isn't that weird? And just
a few years later it's weird. But well, those were
an intense few years. Well, I guess so you know,
to think back to you know, too too small and
will to say small appearances. I mean there were probably
very few people in the crowds at these things. I
mean maybe a few hundred at each maybe at the most.
So yeah, I guess it would be something that history
(38:22):
could easily overlook and uh and then just totally forget
about it. And again it's just lost to the history
books because you know, this car was destroyed. Really only
the people that were there really, you know, told the
tale afterwards. And uh. And for whatever reason, there wasn't
a push to bring this back post war. I don't.
I just can't get it because the timing would have
been just right. And this leaves us with a couple
(38:45):
of questions. You know, was was this plastic really as
good as so many of the history books say or
has it been exaggerated? Uh? Could have been extremely expensive
at the time. That's a really point too, That's the
that's the other thing. It could have been like the
carbon fiber of the day, right, you know that you
(39:05):
sure we can do it, but each panel costs us
ten times or twenty times what it costs to make
a steel panel. It might it could be something like
that also, why did the guy who originally lost the
project become the one to destroy it? It sounds so
easy to ascribe, you know, some sort of sense of
(39:25):
vindictiveness to it, But we don't know. Maybe somebody told
him he had to do it, and it visit his job,
he had to do it. Could be, but it's odd
that the one guy that was that it was in
his hands before and he couldn't do it. He's the
one who's assigned to destroy the thing. It doesn't you
know what. It doesn't look good, that's what you know.
It doesn't. It doesn't have it doesn't have good optics,
as they say, right good, that's the one. And if there,
(39:47):
if there was some sort of cover up or conspiracy,
then why and who did it? And why would it originate?
It seems relatively unnecessary. It would it be some shadowy
cabal of steel manufact true? You know? To me, Ben,
I'm not, I don't know if i'd buy into the
whole conspiracy thing. I just I just feel like this
is just bad timing. Yeah, I don't. I don't think
(40:09):
And one way it was perfect timing and the other
way with bad timing because they forgot all about it.
If if it happened. Let's say that all has happened
where they revealed the car right after World War Two,
and of course there's this massive shortage, shortage of metal
because it had all been used for the war effort,
and there's a post World War two boom, the age
of the auto reaches a new era. Yeah, it's it's
(40:29):
possible that this could have really taken off at that point,
but we guess we'll just never know again. And then
when they came back with something, you know, acceptable in
the nineteen eighties later, I guess maybe nineteen nineties. And
I don't know when Saturn emerged. I can't remember the
exact date because I don't have the note in front
of me, but I think it was I'm gonna say
early nineties, but it was. But right then that everybody's like, well,
(40:52):
it's a revolutionary idea, but it really really wasn't. Did
you know I had two Saturns when I was? It? Good?
You didn't. Yeah, we had a few people here who
had savings. What type did you have? Let's see, I
had a long time ago. It was the cup, Oh,
the SC two S two I think its SC It
(41:12):
was the S two that's one and uh, I got
in an accident, wrapped that thing around a tree, and
they were really safe. Uh, but what they didn't tell
you is that sure you'll be fine, but that car
will be gone. Did his job, I guess right. Yeah,
it was a life saving clean x versus a tree.
(41:34):
And on the same day I went back. It was
close to where I was living at the time. And
again I was a young driver and I was just
petty enough. When I realized I was okay and I
got a tow truck out there, I'm mortified. You know,
my parents are going to meet beyond angry. Right. It
(41:56):
was totaled. So I walked back to our house. I
got an ax, I walked back. This is about a
mile and a half way egae way, and then cut
the tree down. In cursed it the whole time, cut
the tree down. Yeah, that's a good story, is it.
It makes me look pretty petty and like a bad driver,
(42:18):
But I think I did learn my lesson. This isn't
in somebody's front yard then, obviously, this is like on
the side of the road somewhere. Yeah. Okay, So the
thing is that that that technology, though it does work,
and we have a few other hemp related things that
might surprise people because we looked into this. You know, no,
it's it's probably not a not a hemp car, but
(42:41):
there might have been hemp components. But the one of
the last big twists of the story is that Henry
Ford had a deeper philosophical impetus in his creation of
these different organic material approaches like the Spanish smallest in
(43:03):
the seats. Uh. There's a reason for this, and that
is something that you've got alluded to a little bit
earlier in the show. Henry Ford was a farm boy
and he was consistently trying to blend to meld agriculture
and industry. It was it was a long term goal
(43:25):
of his, and a lot of people forget that in
nineteen o eight he already had something like a hemp
car because the first model t s could be run
off gasoline or you could get an option to run
them off a hemp based fuel. Hemp based fuel. The
hemp based fuel, is that right? Apparently? So now I
know that there are engines that will run on just
about anything that will burn really, yeah, so that must
(43:47):
be what this is. But he for some reason chose
a hemp based fuel for one of those options, and
then the eventually they took that they just stopped making
that because of the way gas was working out economically,
you know what I mean, people are much more likely
to use gas or be around a gas station. Sure, well,
at that time he probably had to buy gas at
(44:08):
you know, by the gallon in a container. I don't
think they're gas pumps at every corner like they no, no, no,
but he saw that he felt the wind shifting. You
going to the drug store and buy five gallons of
gas and five one gallon containers maybe or something like that,
and you know, probably glass containers. Do you have you
had the equivalent of like a milkman who comes by
(44:29):
your house in the wee hours and just there you go,
full delivery like we talked about, Yeah we do. There
are fuel delivery services, mobile fuel delivery. Yeah. So I
don't know. It's it's a strange idea of this, this
hemp based fuel back in nineteen o eight that he's
using for his model T. It's weird, and the story
doesn't end there, because people around the globe are researching
(44:52):
ways to UH to use hemp as possibly UH a
fuel source. In some time play aces. Uh, construction material,
you know, not just for autos, well, I mean interior fabric.
I guess for cars would be an easy one. That's
an easy one to pick out and say it's durable.
You know, it's uh, it's it's it's inexpensive to create. Um,
(45:14):
there's a lot of pros I guess to the as
you'll hear if you go to again any music festival
and Hemp product a T shirt of person, poncho or
whatever you're gonna buy. So, yeah, you'll get the you'll
get the lecture that goes along with it. You know,
I never go to car at least at least the
handout card that you know says yeah, I'm not I'm
just not a concert guy. Man, you're a smart consumer.
(45:35):
And here's why, right. Uh So that concludes our story
for now. We do know that there are people who,
as we said, are researching the future of Hemp, and
our story of the misidentified soybean car ends there. Yeah,
(45:55):
so if anybody tells you in the future that then
Henry Ford built a Hemp car, you can tell me, you
you know the truth. Soybeansbeans, soybeans classics and soybeans. Yeah,
and uh, I think still a very impressive endeavor. We
hoped you enjoyed this closer look at one of Henry
(46:15):
Ford's many, many strange experiments, and this is actually a
little bit less strange than many others. Uh. If you
would like to learn more about Henry Ford, then we
invite you to check out the stuff you missed in
History Class podcast starting my co host Scott you were
the you were the expert on Henry Ford here. You know,
(46:38):
at this point, maybe I am. I suppose we've talked
about him so many times on different podcasts and our podcast.
There's there's a wealth of information out there about him
that we haven't even touched on yet. So um, I
feel like there's so many stories to tell. And you
can also check out all of our other Henry Ford
related podcast on our website Car Stuff Show dot com,
(46:59):
where you can find every audio podcast we have ever done.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter where we are Car
Stuff h s W. And if if none of that
really is is getting it cooking with gas? I'm trying
to make a Hemp car reference. Boy, I don't know
none burning your rope? I like that. Okay, we'll go
(47:22):
with that. If none of that burn is burning your rope.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are in luck. You can write
to us directly with suggestions for upcoming topics in the
inside scoop you have on the legend of the hemp car,
or you know just the tip you think your fellow
listeners should know. We are car stuff at how stuff
work dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(47:47):
other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff works dot Com. I had
a welcome the car Stuff. I'm Scott, I'm Ben. As always,
we are joined by our super producer, Dylan Fagan. We'll
see if a nickname pops up here. I think there
(00:23):
could be some fun one, because I think there can. Uh.
This is gonna be a little bit, a little bit different, uh,
in comparison to many of our other topics. We are
talking about a specific historical experiments, something maybe the corporate
world would call a big swing. Oh yeah, with a twist,
(00:44):
with one heck of a twist. I guess the best
way to say it, and not to not to bleed
over into too many other shows, but they get the
best way to say it is that conspiracies can occur
in any realm or discipline, and cars are no different.
And in our one of our other shows, you've been
(01:05):
a guest where you discussed some various cover ups or
skull duggery that occurred in the automotive world. Yeah, sure
we have. And you know I should ahead and plug
your own show because it's a great show, So go ahead.
Yeah stuff. They don't want you to know as our
show that applies critical thinking to conspiracy theories and you know,
fringe reports, and we get into some weird stuff. But
(01:27):
you might be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, how often in
these two seemingly vastly different shows find themselves on the
same page. Yeah, we talked about water powered cars and
what else we talk about. I think maybe some we
we had thrown around these ideas, so if they weren't episodes,
forgive me. But we talked about pavement that wouldn't wear out.
We talked about like maybe a carburetor that uh it
(01:49):
could be tuned to get you know, for cars to
get one miles per gallon back in the nineteen fifties
and sixties. Um, there's a lot of ideas that have
been thrown out there. I can't remember how many of
these we actually laid down the recording for though. The
trolley systems being bought out, that's right, Yeah, the trolley
car scandal. Yeah no, uh, I believe that was GM. Right, Yeah,
that was GM, and they did get found guilty in court,
(02:12):
and uh and and a bunch of other oil companies. Right,
But that's that's the real thing that really happened yeah,
that really happened. Um, what are some of the other
one other weird ones that are tied into this? Did
we did? Have we covered? I don't even know if
we should touch on this or not. The city, Oh,
the entire city. We may have mentioned it, but it's definitely.
(02:33):
It's definitely. And uh, you did a piece on it
for the history folks. I did, Yeah, but it was
way back in two thousand twelve. Not that anything's changed
right with it. But this is all stuff we're gonna
touch on today. Yeah, and that show is stuff you
missed in history class. You can, if you are an
intrepid investigator, you can you can find the episode we're
talking about. This is you know, I feel like so
(02:54):
far I'm walking this delicate balance. I don't know what
you want me to reveal yet or not, because there
are some stuff to reveal, you know, during this podcast.
So I feel like I'm kind of on the line here.
So let's let's do this. How about we just jump
right into it. Alright, let's start this episode and uh,
and I'll try not to open my big mouth. And
if I do, people'll cut it out. Maybe we won't.
May we'll leave it in and that'll be the reveal.
(03:15):
Oh but it'll be It'll be perfect, because this is
a pretty strange and exciting thing. Because of all these
car related conspiracies or cover up allegations that we have named,
ladies and gentlemen, we have yet to touch on one
one theory that we have never addressed in all the
years we've been doing car stuff, and that is the
(03:36):
story that as World War Two loomed on the horizon,
the legendary automotive tycoon Henry Ford proposed and built a
radical new vehicle that he thought would change the state
of manufacturing forever, the Hemp car, a car entirely built
out of hemp. Right. So, I mean, I guess we're
talking about marijuana, right. I mean, it's sort of if
(03:58):
there's a difference, and I think you probably know the
difference between hamp and marijuana. Right. So when we first
learned of this interesting anomaly here, or this interesting legend, right,
the my initial reaction was, well, Henry Ford's an eccentric individual,
(04:18):
so if someone were to try to do that, I
could absolutely see him doing it. And when we ran
into this, you know, we found it on these uh
less than reputable websites for instance, and one of the
things that you might envision is somebody who is you know,
(04:39):
like a stoner who was going, yeah, man, they're covering
up you know, like how useful marijuana is and stuff
like that. But there is, uh there there are some
interesting differences between the kind of hemp that would be
involved in this project and the kind of uh brug
(04:59):
that would smoke, even though they're the same species. And
playing into this before you begin your description of the
two is that Ford has kind of a history of,
I guess, experimenting with other materials for for um, you know,
the purposes that he needed. So let's say the Spanish
moss for the packing of the the seat instead of
the fiber filled stuff, and that you know, kind of
(05:22):
backfire on him as well. Um, but that's like one
early early example that I can think of. So there's
a couple of those, and then even into modern day.
So if you're you're looking at this, you know as history,
which we are today, um, modern day, you know that
Ford is experimenting with a lot of different materials to
make you know, new types of plastics and body materials
and and make things stronger and lighter, etcetera. So there's
(05:44):
there's a little bit of something in the back of
your head that lets you think like, yeah, this, this
could be a thing. He could have tried to build
an entire car made out of hemp, right right, At
first it sounds crazy, but then there's that moment, the
moment of reflection, What do you think, Wow, Like he's
a crazy bastard. Day. So when I say that lovingly, yes, yes,
with uh no shortage of immense respect of course, which
(06:08):
Scott calling someone a bastard is about the highest compliments.
We have to beat that or we have to get
that out of their hand. It'll it'll just sound worse
if you beep it. So okay. So usually when people
say hemp, what they're talking about our strains of what's
called cannabis sativa that have been bred specifically for fiber,
(06:28):
and this fiber could be used in clothing and construction,
to make oils, other substances. That the main point is
it doesn't have a large amount of th HC, so
it doesn't create that feeling people have of being high
after they consume marijuana. Now, the other stuff, pot weed,
t Uncle Milroy's elbow medicine, whatever you wanna call it
(06:51):
that's too long for Dylan's nickname. By the way, Dylan,
Uncle Milroy faked not bad. But but you know, whatever
people call it, that's just a slang term used to
describe the strains of essentially the same plant that are
specifically bred for these um resinous clans and lee and
(07:11):
these leaves or buds that contain a lot of th HC. Okay,
so you handed me a note earlier that said that
the difference between these two is really semantic, really um okay,
So not only hemp and pot come from the same genus,
but they're the same species, but they're bread for different purposes. Really,
so one is bread for more of a um well,
(07:33):
I guess material science type type application, you know, with
with fibers that they could be woven into rope or cloth.
We see, you know, at all these music festivals you
find bags and uh sandals and things that you know
have been woven from hemp, and and of course along
with that goes the speech that you know, this is
a fiber, this is a plant that should be you know,
planted on every available space that we have. You know,
(07:55):
it should be everybody should be growing this because it's
so useful for so many things, right, and there is
an agricultural argument, a very old agricultural argument that's been
going on. But there's also when we talk about the
semantic stuff, it also takes us into the legal world,
which gets murky very very quickly because here in the
United States, uh, there are multiple state level definitions of
(08:19):
what is or isn't a legal use of this species. Yeah,
and I'll be honest with you, at this point, at
this point in our history, I'm lost as to where
it's it's legal, where it's not legal, Who can grow,
and how much you can grow, how much you can carry,
how much all that stuff. I just I completely have
lost track. Early on, it was easy enough that you know,
Colorado could do this, you know, and and their stores
(08:40):
and you know that that was that was about it,
and then it's spread from there. I think I think
Colorado is the first. But um, that's that's again, that's
the more recreational use type stuff that we're talking about, exactly.
And so as the US has been moving away from
marijuana prohibition, states are scrambling in a relatively non unified
(09:02):
effort to figure out definitions of what would count as marijuana.
The drug and what we count as hemp the agricultural product,
and that phrase is very important, not just to us,
but to Henry Ford. So it's no secret that the
federal government for a very long time opposed products with
hemp components due to the bad image, the association with marijuana.
(09:26):
And you can kind of see where they're coming from,
because it would be if there's a thing that can
also be a drug, or you can make rope with
it and maybe a car who knows, well, we know,
and we'll tell you in a little bit. But it's
it becomes very difficult from a legal standpoint, from law
(09:49):
enforcement standpoint, to keep your eye on every sparrow pot
grower wise, and I can check every level of THHC
from every crop that is is being grown out there, right.
And then there are a lot of people who, as
you said, champion the idea of him and tell these
stories like, oh, George Washington farmed it, and so it
(10:10):
has a million uses and it's true it does. Yeah, well,
and what about what about all the great rock music
and stand up comedy, Yeah, and artists, you know, a
lot of art would not be created without without jazz cigarettes.
That was my favorite one. I learned, uh for stoner
food and for that matter, what about the cars. When
(10:34):
we get into this, we have to start out by saying,
there is so much misinformation out there about Henry Ford. Yeah,
he's a living legend. Well, he was a larger than
life figure who became a legend after after he passed away,
a brilliant man who was an acolyte of Thomas Edison,
who is a well, I guess I'll go out and
(10:56):
say it, thom Essen's a bit of a stone cold bastard.
That's too times in one episode have to bump us
up to we might have to It's okay, we'll try
to back that down. How about that. We'll try to
back that. Keep it, keep it. And as we discussed before,
it's speculated that he even played some part in the
creation of what we refer to as the weekend. The weekend, Oh,
(11:18):
that's right, we had about how he created the weekend
so he can get more productivity. Well, anyways, there's a
there's a whole story behind it's pretty interesting. So he
could get some customers, yeah, his own people that didn't
have time to buy cars. But also he you know,
wasn't imperfect person by any means. Uh, he had some
(11:39):
he had some very uh he had some very strict,
uncompromising standards. And sometimes, of course he could be a
little bit of a loon. And he's we've documented, has
we've documented. Uh, So of course when we hear the story,
we think, oh, that makes sense. This guy is uber
(11:59):
bonker as at times. Yeah, And again here we're talking
about the town. Here's the town that I was mentioning before.
And I know we're not letting out any secrets here yet,
but it's part of the story. So if you want
to think about like one of his craziest it's not
adventures but ventures before at Landia. And the story for
Landy is fascinating, it really is. It's it's really, really,
(12:19):
really interesting. It started around it was abandoned by nineteen
thirty four, so in that short time I kind of
had to give up on this dream. But the idea
was he's gonna employ I think it was in Brazil, right,
it's an it's off a river in Brazil. It's in
the Amazon, Yeah, and it's just this desolate area that
he was hoping to employ ten thousand people in the
(12:40):
I guess it would be the American rubber industry really
in a way. I mean, this would be like a
remote plant that would produce this raw material for him
to use in his factories that he would need for
auto production. It's like a rubber plantation meets and idealized
Norman Rockwell esque. Yeah, it never really got off the ground.
And again Stuffy missed in History Class did a full
(13:02):
episode on this back in two thousand ten, and then
I joined them for a kind of a guest host
spot in two thousand twelve where we talked about Ford himself,
and of course for Landia came up at some point,
and that during that show. It was a two part episode. Um,
I think I think all thanks Ben, I think that,
um in the second part is where we discussed ford Landia,
but I could be wrong. Maybe part one. Well my
(13:25):
favorite part about ford Landia because it does sound interesting
and maybe a little bit self important, right to name
it ford Landia, but I think you've earned that right
if you're building a town in the Amazon. The thing
that makes it weird is that he forced the people
(13:46):
who lived there, the employees and their families two engage
in this his idea of what the ideal American small
town should be like, so it's a dry town, no drinking. Uh,
there was a baseball team. People had certain codes of
dress they were expected to adhere to. It was like
(14:07):
you know that movie The Stepford Wives was trying to
create like a Stepford existence. This this all plays back
into where he was born. I think he's born out
in the country, way out in the country somewhere. And um,
he later had great guilt over his own invention. He
felt that he had somehow destroyed something that he held
(14:27):
so close to his heart by allowing um, well, I
don't know the best way to say this. I'll have
to go back and listen to the way that we
framed this before. But he came from this little um
bucolic area Greenfield Township, Greenfield Township, Okay, And then it
moved to the city to do his work in Dearborn,
you know, etcetera. And along the way a lot of
different there were a lot of steps along the way,
(14:48):
but ended up in the city and then realized that
there's this pristine, beautiful countryside out there that he was
then allowing people from the city to travel to in
their in their cars that were spewing um, you know,
Lutant's really right. And he had this this this guilt
that he had created a machine that was going to
somehow um sully, that that that area was going to
(15:09):
gonna make it, you know, something not as pure as
it was prior to you know, back when he was
a kid. I guess right at times they were changing, yea,
So he had this strange like, you know, I did this,
but I'm also guilty of this. Yeah, And it kind
of makes sense that he was trying to recreate that
and keep it pristine, keep it you know, keep it
clean there, I guess. And I think they even had
rules like no dancing, and it was very it was
(15:30):
very puritan. I think, you know, that's the that's kind
of the general focus of this whole town. And that
sounds kind of like a set of rules that I'm
just my cynicism is coming out here, Scott. But often
when people make those sorts of rules, it's because it's
very easy to make rules that you don't have to obey.
(15:51):
I'm not saying that Henry Ford was out, you know,
drinking all day and dancing all night, but I'm saying
he didn't live in ford Landy. No, he didn't but
I honestly believe that this character was somebody who probably
didn't drink, probably really like what wasn't a you know,
go late, you know, get get to bed late in
the evening and party kind of guy. I think he
(16:12):
was a you know, early to bed, early to rise
guy who was a hard worker, industrious. He had some
you know again, some bonker's views of the world. Um
and again all this is all of this, everything and
and much much more by the way, that we were
not discussing here today. All this plays into the idea that, yeah,
it's possible that this character could have decided he was
(16:33):
going to build a HEMP car, a car made entirely
out of him. And that's the question. Did he really
make a car entirely out of himp? We'll tell you
the answer after a word from our sponsor. Oh, Ben,
(16:55):
you left us with a real cliffhanger here. So what
so what really happened? All right? Well, as a gentleman,
you can scoop back from the edge and continue to
use the rest of your seat. The answer is this, No, No,
he did not make a car entirely out of him.
It's a bummer, right, but sort of That's the that's yeah,
(17:17):
that's the truth. Well, first, just to be clear, you
can't make an entire car out of him. You know,
you have rubber for tires, you have an engine that
needs to be built with something that is not him. Sure, yeah, yeah,
there's of course metal and rubber components, and and of
(17:38):
course there's all the fluids and stuff that would have
to be somehow contained, and you can't do that in
something mad, right, And I think most people know that.
I just want to establish so well, of course, yeah,
that's the that's logical. But so what we're talking about
really is the body shell out of I said that weird,
the body shell that was made out of that's the
emphasis on the wrong salabl thing, right, So, so mad
(18:00):
he made he made the bodyshell out of hemp was
the the claim that the claim. But what really happened
was he made it out of an entirely different material altogether.
And what was that soybeans. So there is a grain
of truth in this story. He did make what people
called a soybean car, and it may have actually contained
(18:25):
some amount of hemp. This is not just a story
made from thin air. So it's a mixture, right, because
because soybeans that they have and if you look at
the chemical makeup of a soybean, I had it some
here somewhere here, But there's a there's a breakdown of
how much protein is there, how much soluble soluble fiber,
unsoluble fiber, and just how much how moisture all that
(18:46):
there's oils involved. Um, So, soybeans themselves can't make what
we're talking about here. This is a this is a
plastic product that they made. And plastics. If you think
back to when this was happening, which would have been
the late nineteen thirties, early that was a relatively new thing. Yeah,
it was. It was new thing. People were still figuring
(19:07):
it out. We hadn't yet reached that phase where do
you remember the movie The Graduate. Yes, isn't there a
conversation in the Graduate somewhere where this guy's like plastics,
my boy. They were still new. So we weren't even
at that stage where you know, your your relatives or
some family friend will tip you off, you know. But
(19:29):
we're at the stage where the early adopters are beginning
to understand just how far plastic can go as a technology.
And Henry Ford was very much a a progress oriented person,
the great experiment er. He had no problem dismissing the
status quoes of his day, especially if he felt they
(19:50):
were limiting progress. So let's go to where Scott Scott started.
Here the late nineteen thirties. He saw several problems is
looming on the horizon one steel had at the time,
some some real issues, some limit limitations as a building
material for automobiles, converting order to steel, complex operation. And also,
(20:15):
you know, he has to work with other companies, which
is not always his favorite thing. No, that's why he
builds his own companies to supply his company or his factories.
And he beat So he began thinking what else? What
else could I do? What are alternative materials? Could you
build his car with something else? So here's what happened
(20:35):
in late nineteen thirties. I guess Henry visited or he
made it, made a visit to his own village that
he created, you know, to to train you know, um
prospective engineers and designers and all that he had. This
place it was like a tech school almost really, and
it was the Deerfield Village Trade School. And this is
where he learned about a crop that they were experimenting
(20:56):
with at the time, which was, of course something that
was kind of obscure, are an irrelevant in the West
at the time, which it was soybeans, right, people didn't
know very much about soybeans. The average American citizen wouldn't.
Henry Ford, however, became obsessed. Man. He loved soybeans. He
was probably one of the first Americans to drink soy
(21:18):
milk on a regular basis. Which we're just going to
add to more of our strange facts about Henry Ford.
We should really, maybe we should just make a book
of this. He had a lunch at the ninety four
World's Fair where he served at all soy menu. We're
talking soy crackers, soy cheese, soy milk, straight up soy
beans and so on, and not just that. I've got
(21:40):
one a little surprise for you here. What's that. This
is a little bit later in the in the story,
but I'm gonna show you a picture of him. It's
a famous picture. He's he's celebrating. He is celebrating his
his birthday in seventy eight birthday. So let's jumping ahead
a little bit, but we'll come back in time. He's
wearing this this kind of light colored suit and he's
sitting on a bale of hey out in the field.
(22:02):
That's a soybean suit, a soybeans suits, a suit made
out of soybeans. So this guy is eating soybeans, he's
drinking soybean milk. He's wearing a suit made of soybeans.
He's all in. He's all in this right. And it's
only a few years after he learned about it. But
he is a soybean fan. He probably had you know,
banners in his room that said soybeans raw or whatever.
You are so excited about it. And uh, and he's
(22:24):
learning about the stuff from these these young engineers and
designers and technicians that are working on these and these
labs in this place that he has created for them
to eventually come to work for him. And that's so strange.
That suit is blowing me away. Soybean suit. It's an
iconic photo. I mean, you could look it up and
if you just look up Ford Soybeans suit one you'll
(22:45):
find it. It's a it's a funny photo. And you
see him in that suit a lot. I mean, I
wonder if you have many was he wear all soy clothes?
You know, I would I would guess that this is
probably one of a kind. I would I would think,
how would you? I'm interested to learn about the process there. Well,
this even proves This proves the point even further because
he believed in the versatility of soybeans and he didn't
(23:08):
think it needs to be limited solely to foods. In
hopes of building a cheaper, more durable, and lighter car,
he turned to the soybean and he originally enlisted the
help of a stylist named Et Gregory. Remember that name, folks,
It comes up later. Yeah, that's right. And uh so,
so this project, the project goes on right now. He's
(23:28):
kind of helping him develop this thing, but he's reportably
dissatisfied with the work that he produced on this team,
so he said he's going to handle this off to
another guy. His name is Lowell E. Overly, and his
background he had a background prior to working in Ford
Soybean Library Library Laboratory with a with a tool and
(23:49):
diet design as a tool and die designer. So he's
a tool and die guy. But he's brought in to
work on this soybean project. So that's kind of an
unusual mix for him. Yeah, probably haven't found the right
guy yet. There's another guy if they need to kind
of tap into his, his ideas, his resources for this project. Right.
And one thing that Overly did very well, which is
a skill that not a lot, not that more people
(24:11):
should have that we can all find useful, is Overly said, well,
you know what, I'm not an expert. I'm not going
to be pretend to be the expert at this part.
So let me find someone who knows the business of chemistry.
And you found a chemist named Robert A. Boyer. And
Boyer is the real, I guess, the real heroic figure
(24:32):
in our story. Yeah, and I've got a little bit
of a tie into this guy as some a little
bit of personal knowledge that just a little bit we
talked about this off area, not a lot. But tell
you what, let's take a word from our sponsor right
now and we'll come back with and we're back. Scott
(24:56):
gotta keep stop pushing people to the edge of their
seats to well, this is a distant at best, you know,
degrees of Henry Ford. For me, it's because as close
as I can get, really, I suppose for a short
while and uh, you know, several year. I'd say several
years really in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.
My mom dated a guy she's divorced. She dated a
(25:18):
guy who was Lee I Cocas pilot for Chrysler at
the time. When he was he was like a you know,
the Gulf Stream jet pilot or whatever. The guy's name
was Thomas Boyer. And Thomas Boyer is the son of
Robert A. Boyer, this chemist that worked with Henry Ford.
And so I heard of this way back in the
nineteen eighties when he was talking about his dad, because
(25:39):
his dad was still around at the time. His father
passed away in nine This Robert Boyer did the chemist. Um,
so he was still around when I was talking with him. Um.
And we had gone to the Henry Ford, which is
a museum Aarontown, the Henry Ford, and there were I
think it was a film strip that had him, this
guy Thomas Boyer on Henry Ford's lap on SMUs Day,
(26:00):
like a film bizarre. He's like, that's me. That's that.
He had no idea it was going to be there,
but his family was invited because Henry Ford had kind
of taken this guy under his wing. This is this Robert,
this Robert Boyer and of course you know, being his family.
Of course he was invited to some of the Ford
family functions and holidays and things like that at the
at the Ford mansion. And this guy was pretty fascinating.
(26:21):
He had things like you know, food patents and on preservatives,
and he had the patent on bacos, which are those
bacon bits that you shake on on your salad. Uh,
you know they're not real bacon. Just an interesting character
all around, but he was. He was taken in by
Ford because he had what Ford called a keen active
mind when he when he first met him as a
as a youngster in this in this deer Field village place. Um.
(26:45):
But he brought him in and let him work closely
with him on the soybean project because he felt he
was the one that could do it, and he did.
He ended up making um what we know is like
the plastic panels for automobiles. Yeah, the Soybean car was
unveiled by Henry Ford on August thirteenth, nineteen forty one,
at a community festival called Dearborn Days. Uh. Ford was
(27:07):
very active in this local community stuff. And again can
I interrupt police. There's there's more iconic photos that you
need to see here, because this is one of Henry
Ford that we've talked about in the past. Him swinging
an axe head at the trunk of a car which
doesn't leave a dent. That was the Soybean car. That's unbelievable. So,
(27:29):
you know in the eighties when we were kind of like,
you know, remarking how incredible it was that these Saturn
cars could have a shopping car bump into the door.
And there remember their their their television commercials, they were
a lot of there were a lot of things like
that happening to Saturn car doors in these commercials where
they would you know, flex in and then flex out. No,
no damage done, right, And it was supposedly revolutionary. But
(27:50):
here's Ford doing it back in ninety one. So Henry
was on top of things and uh and probably just
at the right time too, but they didn't know it right,
because not everyone is that attuned to the future. You know,
this guy really does have his finger on the pulse.
Let's talk a little bit about the actual car. So
(28:11):
it has a frame, it's made of tubular steel as
fourteen of these plastic panels attached to it. The car
weighs two thousand pounds, which makes it a thousand pounds
lighter than a steel car. The plastic window, it's the
windows are plastic. It has a sixty horsepower for flathead
(28:32):
v A. And the thing about those plastic panels, this
is this is interesting, Scott. We know it was called
a soybean car. They would have called it a hemp
car if hemp was the biggest ingredient. But we do
not know the exact ingredients of these plastic panels because
today no record of the formula exists. Yeah, and you
(28:53):
know what else, they can't they can't go back and
somehow determine what was in those panels, you know, via chemistry,
because someone destroyed the plastic car. Right, so it's an
interesting twist on this whole thing. Right, So after they went,
they were on display, you know, they were revealed it
what was that the dearborn days or whatever he said there?
And then also the Michigan State Fair it made another
(29:14):
appearance there, the only two appearances. So that's the only two.
So after that Michigan State Fair appearance, the car disappeared
and was destroyed. It was and this is not like
you know, something we're making. It was just it was destroyed,
and we know it was destroyed. But the person that
destroyed it, that's that's maybe another little twist on this
whole thing. So according to Overly, the toolmaker who was
(29:35):
taking over in contacted Boyer the car. The person who
ordered the soybeans car cars destruction was Et Gregory, the
stylist who originally had the project. So the guy that
the project was taken away from him, I guess if
you want to say twice, it was taken away twice. Uh,
it was taken away the first time because he wasn't
quite cutting it. He went to Overly, and then from
(29:57):
Overly it went on to Boyer, and then Gregory probably
still had a little bit of sour grapes about the
whole thing, and I decided to just destroy it. I mean,
why why would you not hang onto something like that,
or why would you not at least, uh maintain the formula,
because this is a proven winner. This is something that
that they could have kind of held their back pocket,
even if not right now, but you know, let's bring
us out later. And I tell you, whenever they displayed
(30:20):
this thing, whenever they swung that axt at that car
and it didn't dent. And they jumped on the panel
and it didn't dent. It was it was remarkable this product.
People were astounded, you know, the probably went crazy. And
even if it was just a novelty, it would be
even if you know, the specifics of the material science
made it impractical to produce or something, then it would
(30:40):
still be a great thing to put in a museum.
I feel, like Indiana Jones, it belongs in a museum.
You had, like in a big crate where it's huge
music like storage area, you know. Yeah, but you know,
here's the thing, like if they could only have a
piece of that remaining, they could they could analyze what's
in there and figure out how much of that was hawybean,
how much was hemp, how much was other material you
know of types of fiber they used or or whatever.
(31:02):
I mean, it's an interesting product, really, and I wish
they had I wish they had taken the time to
keep a sample of it, or at least, you know,
a better search for the formula that was created by
Robert Boyer there. Yeah, you know, there might be something
there in his notes from his estate or there might
be something, uh there, there might be something out there,
you ever know, maybe passed on to his son Thomas.
(31:25):
Maybe maybe you should I should re establish that context.
I should right back through. Would be a weird letter,
my friend. That would be like I, hey, remember me
from thirty years ago. So okay, here's one thing we
can do though. We can explore the speculation people have
about the formula. So you'll see some articles that claim
(31:45):
the formula for these miracle plastic panels contained many ingredients,
including soybeans, wheat, flax, and wait for it, I'm kidding hemp.
Uh So, the man who was instrumental in creating the
car loll overly claims that this was sweeping fiber in
(32:07):
a phenolic resin with formaldehyde used in the impregnation. However,
it's possible that only Boyer had the real scoop on
the ingredients. Now I have a question for you. Is
it possible that the the cloth backing for use for this,
because it had to be it was, it was impregnated
um into a cloth. Is that right? That could have been?
It could have been all hemp. You know, that's an
(32:29):
interesting point, Scott. It might not have had it been
in the chemical makeup of the actual plastic itself. It
could have been that the fabric that that it was
that was built on. I suppose that could have been
the hemp you know, element to this whole thing. I
just now thought of that that instead of being part
of the mixture, it's the base material. That's a you
know what, That's a very good idea. I don't know. Well,
(32:51):
I guess we'll never know. Yes, unfortunately we will. We
will never know. But the good news there the silver
lining on the cloud for those uh, those of us
out in the audience are out in the world who
really want there to be some kind of truth to
the hemp car story. You can hold on to that part.
It might be a hemp assisted car. Hemp assisted Okay,
(33:17):
I like it. That sounds like a heck of a
way to get pulled over. Well, uh so, the big
question then, one of our final questions then is if
this stuff was cool, if as we said, it really
did work, and in that it did the stuff Henry
Ford wanted it to do, then what happened? Why are
(33:39):
why are you not driving and listening to this podcast
in a soy being car right now? Well, we have
better alternative now for plastic, right, I mean, plastic technology
moved on from that point. This is the early early days,
I believe. I think I think this is the right answer, right,
because it seems like, uh, you know, this is the
first thing where we found like, okay, it has the
right chemical you know, composure to to make a way.
(34:02):
You know, I'm now chemist by any means, obviously we
can just no, no, We've determined that throughout this whole podcast.
I'm no chemist, but but it seems like this was sure,
this is a great starting point. But of course everything's
gonna advance, and we're talking about decades and decades and
decades of advancement before we saw some real reliable plastic
material that could be used in exterior and the exterior
(34:23):
of automobiles that would have the properties that we needed.
Resilient um or even um impregnatible materials, is that the
right word. I think that that you can impregnate with
color so that you know, they might not have to
receive as many layers of paint or different types of
paint them or um. You know that you could adhere
um different types of trim and molding to them and
(34:45):
not have that break at the same time, you know
that they kind of match the flexibility of that material.
There's another point to that. I don't know if we
mentioned this U temperature variation. Oh yeah, that's a huge way. Yeah.
How many old Pontiacs did we with those? You know,
those huge side trim is underneath I think it was
the old Bonnavilles maybe, Um, that would have just wavy
(35:08):
material on the side from about the middle point of
the driver door and passenger door down all the way
to the ground. And it was just like it. It
just couldn't. Um, it couldn't withstand the heat of it,
let's say, being in the reflection of a building, or
it couldn't stand the uh, you know, the cold and
then the heat. So let's say that would be extremely
cold in the north and uh, you know, twenty below
(35:29):
or whatever, and then in the summertime it's ten. It's
enough to create a plastic that can stand up to that. Yeah,
And it's even tougher when we consider that it's not
just a matter of whether the material remains stable temperature wise,
many plastics that would be otherwise fine, or several plastics
(35:49):
that would be otherwise fine, can't be included in these
sorts of endeavors or projects, because when the heat rises,
they emit dangerous chemicals. You know what I'm mean. Yeah,
I get you a new car smell that's slowly killing you.
It's not so much just holding shape. It's also that
it's giving off stuff that you don't necessarily want around you,
(36:09):
you know, as your body. I guess it would be
dangerous high degree of v O c s and those
are those are responsible in some way for the new
car smell, which a lot of people love. And I'm
I'm exaggerated when I say it's slowly killing you. You
would have to lock yourself in a car and huff
a lot of that for it to harm you, probably
(36:30):
right in the heat of summer too. Yeah, I mean
so that it's get off gas and as much as possible, right,
it would be. You don't want to do that. It
would be a really elaborate and weird experiment, and you
would eventually have to explain yourself to someone. There is
another factor, what's that in the in the soy Bean
Car we tangentially mentioned it in the beginning here. The
(36:55):
anticipation of an upcoming loss of steel resources, which and
Reford you know, had a spider sense about did occur.
But it was even worse than he imagined, because with
the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of one same
just a few months after the unveiling of the Soybean Car,
the US was drawn into World War two. Domestic auto
(37:17):
production Uh real, well, I guess what they say nowadays
is pivoted. Well, it halted, really, yeah, its all pivoted. Sure,
I mean because they produced other things. They didn't just
stop and that's it. Uh, they produced other things, tanks
and airplanes and you know, any kind of artillery that
they needed. It's just it was a different direction for
the for the country at that time. And of course
(37:37):
all the metal was being you know, resourced for that effort.
So um, you know this, that's that this would have
been perfect timing for them to use this type of
material for their bodies after World War Two. I don't
know why it didn't catch on immediately after World War Two. Well,
when the dust settled, Uh, it seemed that people had
(38:01):
just plumb forgot about it. Isn't that weird? And just
a few years later it's weird. But well, those were
an intense few years. Well, I guess so you know,
to think back to you know, too too small and
will to say small appearances. I mean there were probably
very few people in the crowds at these things. I
mean maybe a few hundred at each maybe at the most.
So yeah, I guess it would be something that history
(38:22):
could easily overlook and uh and then just totally forget
about it. And again it's just lost to the history
books because you know, this car was destroyed. Really only
the people that were there really, you know, told the
tale afterwards. And uh. And for whatever reason, there wasn't
a push to bring this back post war. I don't.
I just can't get it because the timing would have
been just right. And this leaves us with a couple
(38:45):
of questions. You know, was was this plastic really as
good as so many of the history books say or
has it been exaggerated? Uh? Could have been extremely expensive
at the time. That's a really point too, That's the
that's the other thing. It could have been like the
carbon fiber of the day, right, you know that you
(39:05):
sure we can do it, but each panel costs us
ten times or twenty times what it costs to make
a steel panel. It might it could be something like
that also, why did the guy who originally lost the
project become the one to destroy it? It sounds so
easy to ascribe, you know, some sort of sense of
(39:25):
vindictiveness to it, But we don't know. Maybe somebody told
him he had to do it, and it visit his job,
he had to do it. Could be, but it's odd
that the one guy that was that it was in
his hands before and he couldn't do it. He's the
one who's assigned to destroy the thing. It doesn't you
know what. It doesn't look good, that's what you know.
It doesn't. It doesn't have it doesn't have good optics,
as they say, right good, that's the one. And if there,
(39:47):
if there was some sort of cover up or conspiracy,
then why and who did it? And why would it originate?
It seems relatively unnecessary. It would it be some shadowy
cabal of steel manufact true? You know? To me, Ben,
I'm not, I don't know if i'd buy into the
whole conspiracy thing. I just I just feel like this
is just bad timing. Yeah, I don't. I don't think
(40:09):
And one way it was perfect timing and the other
way with bad timing because they forgot all about it.
If if it happened. Let's say that all has happened
where they revealed the car right after World War Two,
and of course there's this massive shortage, shortage of metal
because it had all been used for the war effort,
and there's a post World War two boom, the age
of the auto reaches a new era. Yeah, it's it's
(40:29):
possible that this could have really taken off at that point,
but we guess we'll just never know again. And then
when they came back with something, you know, acceptable in
the nineteen eighties later, I guess maybe nineteen nineties. And
I don't know when Saturn emerged. I can't remember the
exact date because I don't have the note in front
of me, but I think it was I'm gonna say
early nineties, but it was. But right then that everybody's like, well,
(40:52):
it's a revolutionary idea, but it really really wasn't. Did
you know I had two Saturns when I was? It? Good?
You didn't. Yeah, we had a few people here who
had savings. What type did you have? Let's see, I
had a long time ago. It was the cup, Oh,
the SC two S two I think its SC It
(41:12):
was the S two that's one and uh, I got
in an accident, wrapped that thing around a tree, and
they were really safe. Uh, but what they didn't tell
you is that sure you'll be fine, but that car
will be gone. Did his job, I guess right. Yeah,
it was a life saving clean x versus a tree.
(41:34):
And on the same day I went back. It was
close to where I was living at the time. And
again I was a young driver and I was just
petty enough. When I realized I was okay and I
got a tow truck out there, I'm mortified. You know,
my parents are going to meet beyond angry. Right. It
(41:56):
was totaled. So I walked back to our house. I
got an ax, I walked back. This is about a
mile and a half way egae way, and then cut
the tree down. In cursed it the whole time, cut
the tree down. Yeah, that's a good story, is it.
It makes me look pretty petty and like a bad driver,
(42:18):
But I think I did learn my lesson. This isn't
in somebody's front yard then, obviously, this is like on
the side of the road somewhere. Yeah. Okay, So the
thing is that that that technology, though it does work,
and we have a few other hemp related things that
might surprise people because we looked into this. You know, no,
it's it's probably not a not a hemp car, but
(42:41):
there might have been hemp components. But the one of
the last big twists of the story is that Henry
Ford had a deeper philosophical impetus in his creation of
these different organic material approaches like the Spanish smallest in
(43:03):
the seats. Uh. There's a reason for this, and that
is something that you've got alluded to a little bit
earlier in the show. Henry Ford was a farm boy
and he was consistently trying to blend to meld agriculture
and industry. It was it was a long term goal
(43:25):
of his, and a lot of people forget that in
nineteen o eight he already had something like a hemp
car because the first model t s could be run
off gasoline or you could get an option to run
them off a hemp based fuel. Hemp based fuel. The
hemp based fuel, is that right? Apparently? So now I
know that there are engines that will run on just
about anything that will burn really, yeah, so that must
(43:47):
be what this is. But he for some reason chose
a hemp based fuel for one of those options, and
then the eventually they took that they just stopped making
that because of the way gas was working out economically,
you know what I mean, people are much more likely
to use gas or be around a gas station. Sure, well,
at that time he probably had to buy gas at
(44:08):
you know, by the gallon in a container. I don't
think they're gas pumps at every corner like they no, no, no,
but he saw that he felt the wind shifting. You
going to the drug store and buy five gallons of
gas and five one gallon containers maybe or something like that,
and you know, probably glass containers. Do you have you
had the equivalent of like a milkman who comes by
(44:29):
your house in the wee hours and just there you go,
full delivery like we talked about, Yeah we do. There
are fuel delivery services, mobile fuel delivery. Yeah. So I
don't know. It's it's a strange idea of this, this
hemp based fuel back in nineteen o eight that he's
using for his model T. It's weird, and the story
doesn't end there, because people around the globe are researching
(44:52):
ways to UH to use hemp as possibly UH a
fuel source. In some time play aces. Uh, construction material,
you know, not just for autos, well, I mean interior fabric.
I guess for cars would be an easy one. That's
an easy one to pick out and say it's durable.
You know, it's uh, it's it's it's inexpensive to create. Um,
(45:14):
there's a lot of pros I guess to the as
you'll hear if you go to again any music festival
and Hemp product a T shirt of person, poncho or
whatever you're gonna buy. So, yeah, you'll get the you'll
get the lecture that goes along with it. You know,
I never go to car at least at least the
handout card that you know says yeah, I'm not I'm
just not a concert guy. Man, you're a smart consumer.
(45:35):
And here's why, right. Uh So that concludes our story
for now. We do know that there are people who,
as we said, are researching the future of Hemp, and
our story of the misidentified soybean car ends there. Yeah,
(45:55):
so if anybody tells you in the future that then
Henry Ford built a Hemp car, you can tell me, you
you know the truth. Soybeansbeans, soybeans classics and soybeans. Yeah,
and uh, I think still a very impressive endeavor. We
hoped you enjoyed this closer look at one of Henry
(46:15):
Ford's many, many strange experiments, and this is actually a
little bit less strange than many others. Uh. If you
would like to learn more about Henry Ford, then we
invite you to check out the stuff you missed in
History Class podcast starting my co host Scott you were
the you were the expert on Henry Ford here. You know,
(46:38):
at this point, maybe I am. I suppose we've talked
about him so many times on different podcasts and our podcast.
There's there's a wealth of information out there about him
that we haven't even touched on yet. So um, I
feel like there's so many stories to tell. And you
can also check out all of our other Henry Ford
related podcast on our website Car Stuff Show dot com,
(46:59):
where you can find every audio podcast we have ever done.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter where we are Car
Stuff h s W. And if if none of that
really is is getting it cooking with gas? I'm trying
to make a Hemp car reference. Boy, I don't know
none burning your rope? I like that. Okay, we'll go
(47:22):
with that. If none of that burn is burning your rope.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are in luck. You can write
to us directly with suggestions for upcoming topics in the
inside scoop you have on the legend of the hemp car,
or you know just the tip you think your fellow
listeners should know. We are car stuff at how stuff
work dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(47:47):
other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.