Henry Ford's Hemp Plastic Car (1941)

In 1941, Popular Mechanics featured another article on the benefits of hemp, this time focusing on the research of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. Today, it is little-known history that the Ford Motor Company developed a plastic car with a frame produced from “a mixture of farm crops and synthetic chemicals,” with the windshield and windows also made from plastic; the car’s weight totaled 2,000 pounds (compared to 3,000 pounds for a steel car of the same size).
Henry Ford spent 12 years researching this plastic car, and in 1941 finally unveiled the plastic car with its outer panels coming from a “recipe that calls for 70 percent of cellulose fibers from wheat straw, hemp and sisal plus 30 percent resin binder.” “Manufactures are already talking of a low-priced plastic car to test the public’s taste by 1943,” the article states. Henry Ford is quoted saying that he one day hopes to “grow automobiles from the soil.”