1953 Maverick

By Jay Hirsch

The early and mid-1950s saw several entrepreneurs emerge on the American car scene. Each thought they could build a sporty-type car for people being ignored by the Big Three: Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. A “new’ type of material happened to come into being at the same time that enabled the making of body panels and complete bodies easier and less costly than to make an automobile body out of metal. This new material was fiberglass.

Sterling “Smoke” Gladwin Jr. of Mountain View, Calif., was one of these entrepreneurs. Sterling was an aeronautical engineer who worked at Boeing and on weekends enjoyed hot rodding in his 1925 Dodge and a 1937 Terraplane. Sterling got the nickname  “Smoke” from racing his hot rods.

From working at Boeing and keeping up to date on the various new materials that came onto the market after WW II, Sterling was fascinated by fiberglass and all the things that could be made from it. In the 1950s, fiberglass was becoming the new material for back yard car builders who could create custom molds and make their own sporty type cars. 

Gladwin made the first Maverick sports car …

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