Although famous for popularizing automobiles, Ford was also one of the first to make plant-based plastics. He even created the first car made of biodegradable plastic.
The assembly line, which the Americans invented, was what allowed the automobile market to explode, revolutionizing the transportation industry at the beginning of the 20th century.
One hundred years later, the proliferation of internal combustion vehicles, which emit carbon dioxide (CO2) - the primary gas causing global warming - is considered one of the leading causes of climate change.
But few know that the man who gave rise to our insatiable passion for cars was also an ecological pioneer.
In the 1930s, Ford was one of the first to manufacture and use what we today call bioplastic: a plastic made from plants that, unlike traditional plastic - made from hydrocarbons - is biodegradable.
Ford didn't just create eco-friendly plastic. He was also the first in history to make a car with this material: the nicknamed Soybean Car, which he presented to the public in 1941.
So convinced was he about the virtues of this plastic - which, he claimed, was ten times stronger than steel - that he took an ax and hit a panel of each material, showing that only the metal had been dented.
However, even though the tycoon himself predicted that "tens of thousands of items and car parts currently made of metal would be made from plastic created from farm-harvested materials," he never realized his vision.
In fact, his Soybean Car was never even marketed and the only model that was manufactured was destroyed. There is not even a replica.
What is known about the Soy Auto
The Benson Ford Research Center acknowledges that very little information was preserved about this original invention, which, however, continues to arouse the interest of many people, especially now that so much attention is paid to environmental issues.
One of the big unknowns is what the car was made of.
"The exact ingredients of the plastic panels are unknown because there is currently no record of the formula," the center explains.
The New York Times article says that "one of the plastics developed by Ford chemists is a material composed of 70% cellulose fiber and 30% resin binder."
"The cellulose fiber is composed of 50% southern cut pine fibers, 30% straw, 10% hemp, and 10% ramie, the material used by the ancient Egyptians for mummies," he details.
Instead, the man in charge of creating the automobile, Lowell E. Overly, gave a very different version.
In another interview, he said it was made from "soy fiber in a phenolic resin with formaldehyde used in the impregnation."
