Ralph Roberts was an American automotive designer who worked for the

Chrysler Corporation FCA US, LLC, doing business as Stellantis North America and known historically as Chrysler ( ), is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of ...

during the 1930s and 1940s.

LeBaron

Although a designer Roberts joined the founders of design practice LeBaron in 1921 to look after administration. The founders left but he remained in the practice which grew to manufacture car bodies and was taken over in 1927 by Briggs. Roberts moved to Briggs along with LeBaron.

Briggs Motor Bodies

Roberts spent much of the second half of the 1930s in England setting up the

Briggs Manufacturing Company Briggs Manufacturing was an American, Detroit-based manufacturer of automobile bodies for Ford Motor Company, Chrysler Corporation and other U.S. and European automobile manufacturers. In 1953, it was bought by Chrysler Corporation without its f ...

plant for the bodies for

Ford Dagenham Ford Dagenham is a major automotive factory located in Dagenham, London, operated by the Ford of Britain subsidiary of Ford Motor Company. The plant opened in 1931 and has produced 10,980,368 cars and more than 39,000,000 engines in its history ...

Glass fiber

Jack Wills of Pasadena California brought in Roberts and formed Wills and Roberts Manufacturing Company (WiRo or WilRo) in 1942 to make plastic housings for

Aerojet Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp, ...

and fiberglass droppable boats using one of the first

polyester resin Polyester resins are synthetic resins formed by the reaction of dibasic organic acids and polyhydric alcohols. Maleic anhydride is a commonly used raw material with diacid functionality in unsaturated polyester resins. Unsaturated polyester r ...

s — Lamitex —and Owens-Corning Fiberglas. Postwar Roberts designed and built a clay model in 1946 for a fibreglass body later briefly made and sold as the Skorpion car.America's Car Museum
accessed July 5, 2019

References

American automobile designers Chrysler designers Year of birth missing Year of death missing {{US-engineer-stub