Glasspar G2

Infobox Automobile
name=Glasspar G2|manufacturer=Glasspar
production=1950–1953
class=Sports car
body_style=2-door coupé
2-door roadsterThe Glasspar G2 was a sports car first manufactured by Bill Tritt in 1949. It is no longer built today. It was the first all-fiberglass body sports car built by an American car manufacturer. It was built as both a production model (in limited numbers) or as a kit car. [ [http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/glasspar-g2/history.htm Hemmings Auto News G2 History] ]

The Glasspar G2 was born in 1949 when Bill Tritt helped his friend, Air Force Major Ken Brooks, design a body for the hot rod Ken was building. The car consisted of a stripped down Willys Jeep chassis with a highly modified V8 engine mounted on it. Bill Tritt, at the time, was building small fiberglass boat hulls in his Costa Mesa, California, factory and he convinced Ken that fiberglass was the ideal material for the hot rod body.

Tritt made sketches of a body and, with Ken and his Ken's wife's approval, proceeded to make the body plug and mold for a low-slung, continental-style roadster. A year and a half later, with a great deal of trial and error, the body was finished, set on the chassis and christened the Brooks Boxer in mid 1951.

, in the early 1950s. By the mid 1950s, Glasspar was producing 15 to 20 percent of all fiberglass boats sold in the U.S. [ [http://ladawri.com/Glasspar/Glasspar.htm Fiberglass Cars of the Fifties at La Dawri - Glasspar G2] ]

The Brooks Boxer was an immediate success when shown at the 1951 Los Angeles Motorama along with three other early fiberglass cars: the big Lancer, the small Skorpion, and the Wasp. Only Tritt's car went on to be the first production fiberglass car. The Boxer mold was then modified and used to produce the beautiful Glasspar G2 sports car that year.

About this time the Korean War was raging, and Tritt was having difficulty acquiring polyester resin for his cars and boats. The Naugatuck Chemical Company in Naugatuck, Connecticut, after seeing the Boxer, sent Glasspar plenty of Vibrin resin and an order for a G2 sports car to promote their product to the auto industry. Naugatuck's G2 was modified and named the Alembic I and was shown at the Philadelphia Plastics Exhibit in 1952. "Life" then featured the car in a story, as did the "New York Times", the "Wall Street Journal" and many auto trade magazines. The Glasspar Company then went public and sold stock to raise capital.

Bill Tritt also designed and/or built fiberglass car bodies for Blanchard Robert "Woody" Woodill, Strassberger Motor Company, British Singer Car Company, Willys, Kaiser, Volvo, and Walt Disney. His last fiberglass car design was the Ascot which the Glasspar board of directors rejected in favor of staying with the core business of boat building. Tritt left Glasspar shortly afterward.

, but later changed to the more suitable steel.

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