excerpt from:
Grown to drive ~ Metal, plastic, glass... and plants?
What kind of cars are they building?
by Curt Guyette

"On August 14, 1941, at the 15th Annual Dearborn Michigan Homecoming
Day celebration, Henry Ford unveiled his biological car. Seventy
percent of the body of the cream-colored automobile consisted of a
mat of long and short fibers from field straw, cotton linters, hemp,
flax, ramie and slash pine. The other 30 percent consisted of a
filler of soymeal and a liquid bioresin.

"The timing gears, horn buttons, gearshift knobs, door handles and
accelerator pedals were derived from soybeans. The tires were made
from goldenrods bred by Ford's close friend Thomas Edison. The gas
tank contained a blend: about 85 percent gasoline and about 15
percent corn-derived ethanol."

To prove the vehicle's superiority, Ford demonstrated the strength of
the car body by smashing an ax against the trunk, only to have it
bounce off. For some it remains a landmark event.

"That's one of my favorite pictures," says Richard Wool, who is at
the vanguard of an emerging industry that's rediscovering what Ford
thought to be a better way of making cars. Following in Ford's track,
Wool is developing adhesive bioresins from soy oil at the University
of Delaware.


-----
From:
Popular Mechanics, December, 1941

The only steel in the hand-made body is found in the tubular welded
frame on which are mounted 14 plastic panels, 3/16 inch thick.
Composed of a mixture of farm crops and synthetic chemicals, the
plastic is reported to withstand a blow 10 times as great as steel
without denting. Even the windows and windshield are of plastic. The
total weight of the plastic car is about 2,000 pounds, compared with
3,000 pounds for a steel automobile of the same size.


http://www.davidicke.net/tellthetruth/facts/fordhemp.html