Designing and building the first Bricklin Prototype #1

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Prototypes one, two, and three were a collaboration by Bricklin Vehicle Corp.; Herb Grasse Design; and AVC Engineering who was responsible for the final chassis design. Here you see the initial body being developed in clay at Herb Grasse Design in Romulus Michigan. In the picture at the far left, the clay modelers are Roy J. Roy, Sr. (left) and Jim Fritch (right).

The finished full-size clay model can be seen being set up to have plaster and fiberglass molds taken off of it. Note the rails in place to separate the molds.

At left is the finished wood buck used for the master scan for all tooling for manufacturing tools and models. It was made by scanning the original clay model at Visioneering Corporation in Detroit. This photo was taken after design and surface approval by Herbe Grasse (left) and Jim Fritch (right), one of the original clay modelers.

Although Prototype #1 was the first pre-production model, it wasn't exactly the first Bricklin. Malcolm Bricklin contracted Dick Dean to fabricate a design concept car that Malcolm used to promote his plans for a start-up car company and elicit venture capital. The styling of that car was done by a man named Marshall Hobart. The car, dubbed the Grey Ghost, differed from the prototype seen above by the lack of rear quarter windows, the size of the rear hatch glass, wheelbase, thinner A-pillars and no bump in the hood since the Grey Ghost had a slant six.