GAR WOOD

Gar Wood Industries (1936-1938)
Detroit, Michigan

This is a Gar Wood emblem (1936-1938)     mjs
Size: 88mm diameter    MM: None

William B Stout was an aircraft designer, who worked on a streamlined streetcar design for Pullman in 1934 and then designed his unique aerodynamic Scarab motor car (see Scarab). Stout went on to design a lightweight bus. The result was a lightweight framework of welded steel tubes covered by a thin steel skin on the outside and an aluminum-alloy skin on the inside with a Ford V-8 engine at the rear. The resulting bus was less than half the weight of a conventional transit bus and was much cheaper to operate.

A prototype was built by Gar Wood Industries, who went on to build a slightly modified version of Stout's design. About 175 Gar Wood buses were built and successfully operated over two years.  The Gar Wood business was sold to General American Transportation Company, who built versions of the Gar Wood bus under the Aerocoach name (see Aerocoach).

Emblem

The painted cast aluminum Gar Wood emblem shown above is very rare, as is the pale green enamel Gar Wood emblem shown below:

This is a Gar-Wood emblem (1936-1938)    sam
Size: 90mm wide 47mm high    MM: Unknown