thumb|Stout Scarab on display in Genoa, Italy

thumb|Stout Scarab on display at Houston Fine Arts Museum

thumb|1935 Scarab at Owls Head Transportation Museum (Owls Head, Maine)

The Stout Scarab is a streamlined car, designed by William Bushnell Stout and manufactured by Stout Engineering Laboratories and later by Stout Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan.

The Stout Scarab is credited by some as the world's first production minivan, and a 1946 experimental prototype of the Scarab became the world's first car with a fiberglass bodyshell and air suspension.

Background

William B. Stout was a motorcar and aviation engineer and journalist. While president of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Stout met Buckminster Fuller at a major New York auto show and wrote an article on the Dymaxion Car for the society's newsletter.

Contemporary production cars commonly had a separate chassis and body with a long hood. The engine compartment and engine were behind the front axle and ahead of the passenger compartment. The front-mounted engine typically drove the rear axle through a drive shaft underneath the floor of the vehicle. This layout worked well, but limited the passenger space.

In contrast, the Scarab design eliminated the chassis and drive shaft to create a low, flat floor for the interior, using a unitized body structure and placing a Ford-built V8 engine in the rear of the vehicle. Stout envisioned his traveling machine as an office on wheels. To that end, the Scarab's body, styled by John Tjaarda, a Dutch automobile engineer, closely emulated the design of an aluminum aircraft fuselage. The use of lighter materials resulted in a vehicle weighing under .

The short, streamlined nose and tapering upper body at the rear foreshadowed contemporary monospace (or one-box) MPV or minivan design, featuring a removable table and second row seats that turn 180 degrees to face the rear — a feature that Chrysler marketed over 50 years later as "Swivel ’n Go".

Although reminiscent of the Chrysler Airflow, streamliner, and the slightly later (1938) Volkswagen Beetle — other aerodynamically efficient shapes, the Stout Scarab was generally considered ugly at the time.

Innovative features

thumb|Front view of Stout Scarab at [[Stahls Automotive Collection]]

thumb|Rear view of Stout Scarab

The Scarab's interior space was maximized by its ponton styling, which dispensed with running boards and expanded the cabin to the full width of the car. A long wheelbase and the engine directly over the rear axle moved the driver forward, enabling a steering wheel almost directly above the front wheels. Passengers entered through a single, large, common door. A flexible seating system could be easily reconfigured (except for the driver's seat, which was fixed). The design anticipated the seating in modern minivans, such as the Chrysler Voyager and Renault Espace; a small card table could be fitted with the passenger seats as needed. Interiors were appointed in leather, chrome, and wood. Design elements also worked in a stylized ancient Egyptian scarab motif, including the car's emblem. Visibility to the front and sides was similar to that of an observation car, although rearward vision was negligible and there were no rear-view mirrors. The Scarab suspension inspired the later Chapman strut used by Lotus from their Lotus Twelve model of 1957. The second prototype was ready in 1935, with some styling and mechanical changes. The headlamps were set behind a fine, vertical-bar grille, and at the rear, narrow chrome bars curved from the back window down to the bumper, giving the car its Art Deco appearance. The body was changed to steel to reduce cost. The vehicles were never produced in volume and were hand-made, with no two Scarabs identical.

See also

  • Brubaker Box
  • Streamliner: Automobiles for overview of early aerodynamic automobiles

Other early teardrop-shaped cars, chronologically

  • Rumpler Tropfenwagen (1921), first aerodynamic "teardrop" car to be designed and serially produced (about 100 units built)
  • Persu car (1922-23), designed by Romanian engineer Aurel Persu, improved on the Tropfenwagen by placing the wheels inside the car body
  • Dymaxion car (1933), US
  • Schlörwagen (1939), German prototype, never produced

References

  • Motoring Memories: William Stout and his Scarab
  • Futuristic Style: 1935 Stout Scarab (Part III)
  • Stout Scarabs at ConceptCarz