page_title: Stout Scarab
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Stout Scarab / Production
caption_attribution_description: A 1946 Stout Scarab at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners. One of the oddest cars I've ever seen.
context_page_description: The Stout Scarab is a 1930–1940s American 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.
context_section_description: A drivable prototype of the Scarab was completed in 1932, probably the first car to have an aluminum spaceframe unit-construction body. Some frame parts were steel. 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.
  Stout stated that the car would be manufactured in limited quantities and sold by invitation. Up to a hundred a year were to be made in a small factory at the corner of Scott Street and Telegraph Road (US 24), Dearborn, Michigan. Although the Scarab garnered much press coverage, at $5,000 (equivalent to $80,000 in 2010), when a luxurious and ultra-modern Chrysler Imperial Airflow cost just $1,345, very few could pay the hefty premium for innovation. Nine Scarabs are believed to have been built. The vehicles were never produced in volume and were hand-made, with no two Scarabs identical.
  Immediately following World War II, Stout built one more prototype Scarab, called the Stout Scarab Experimental. It was exhibited in 1946 and was more conventional in appearance, although still equipped with a rear engine. It was a 2-door, featured a wraparound windshield and the world's first fiberglass body. Like its metal counterparts, it too was a monocoque, built up out of only eight separate pieces and featured the world's first fully functioning air suspension, previously developed in 1933 by Firestone. It was never produced.
  Stout owned and drove his own Scarab, accumulating over 250,000 miles in travel around the United States.
  Up to five Scarabs are reported to survive today. A 1935 Scarab in running condition was on display for many years at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine, but was returned to its lender, the Detroit Historical Museum. The Detroit Historical Museum's vehicle was scheduled to be returned to the museum's storage on August 21, 2016, when another car would be rotated into the exhibition.
caption: Stout Scarab Experimental (1946)
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