Ralph Roberts (automotive designer)

Ralph Roberts was an American automotive designer who worked for the Chrysler Corporation during the 1930s and 1940s.

Ralph Roberts' 1941 Chrysler Newport dual cowl Phaeton show car

LeBaron

Although a designer Roberts joined the founders of design practice LeBaron in 1921 to look after administration. The founders left but he remained in the practice which grew to manufacture car bodies and was taken over in 1927 by Briggs. Roberts moved to Briggs along with LeBaron.[1]

Briggs Motor Bodies

Roberts spent much of the second half of the 1930s in England setting up the Briggs Manufacturing Company plant for the bodies for Ford Dagenham.

Glass fiber
1952 Skorpion

Jack Wills of Pasadena California brought in Roberts and formed Wills and Roberts Manufacturing Company (WiRo or WilRo) in 1942 to make plastic housings for Aerojet and fiberglass droppable boats using one of the first polyester resins — Lamitex —and Owens-Corning Fiberglas.[2] Postwar Roberts designed and built a clay model in 1946 for a fibreglass body later briefly made and sold as the Skorpion car.[3]

gollark: Nuclear weapons, for instance, required a bunch of specialised R&D which was basically only useful for making nuclear weapons.
gollark: And have fewer spinoffs.
gollark: Some technologies lead more easily to harm than others.
gollark: That sounds like another thing which is bound to have no negative consequences.
gollark: I don't have those. I just do computers. Besides, bioweapons could affect other people.

References
  1. Richard M. Langworth, Jan P. Norbye . The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation, 1924-1985 - Page 102. Beekman House, 1985
  2. Dan Spurr. Heart of Glass, page 64, Cruising World, June 2000. Miller Sports Group LLC, Newport RI
  3. America's Car Museum accessed July 5, 2019


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