Glass (63538)

Hans Glas GmbH is a former German automotive company, which was based in Dingolfing. more...

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History

The mechanic Andreas Glas founded a repair company for agricultural machines at 1895 in Pilsting. He named the company Andreas Glas, Reparaturwerkstätte für landwirtschaftliche Maschinen mit Dampfbetrieb (in English: Andreas Glas, repair-shop for steam-powered agricultural machines). During the summer periods about 16 people worked for him. In 1905 Andreas Glas' company built their first sowing machines. He then had sufficient work to employ all his employees during the winters. The production of sowing machines rose from year to year:

winter period 1905/06 - 10 sowing machines

autumn 1906 - 20 pieces

winter period 1906/07 - 40 machines

1907 - 60 pieces

winter period 1907/08 - 254 sowing machines.

Since 1905 Glas had a branch office in Dingolfing. He started to produce in Dingolfing in 1908 with 150 sowing machines per year. The production count rose each year.

After World War II, the market for sowing machines was getting smaller and smaller. So the company had to decide what it would produce in the future. It decided to build little carrows and later working machines for bakers next to the sowing machines.

Products

Glas were known for small cars like the Goggomobil. However in 1964 the company introduced the Glas 1300GT coupe and later the 1700GT. The body was designed by Pietro Frua. However competition, mostly from British cars, was tough and in 1966 released the 2600GT powered by a SOHC V8 engine, with a volume just under 2.6 litres. However this didn't help and later the same year the company was sold to BMW. The Glas models were kept in production by BMW, but fitted with BMW engines. The Glas 1300 GT coupe was fitted with a 1.6 litre BMW engine and renamed BMW 1600 GT. BMW also fitted a 3 litre engine and named it 3000 GT. This model kept the Glas name, but had a BMW logo in the front and rear. In 1968 BMW created their own large coupe, the BMW 2500 CS, and this meant the end for Glas. 277 copies of 2600 GT was made and 389 of the 3000 GT.

Scooters

Andreas Glas made a trip to Verona, Italy. There he saw the Vespa scooter from Piaggio and asked himself whether his people could build a motorscooter. He was so enthused with this vehicle, that he also wanted to produce a motorscooter in his factory. Production started in July 1951

The scooter had 125 cc motor in the beginning. Then 150 cc and 200 cc in the end. Up until 1956 46,181 motor scooters were built. Then production of scooters stopped because of the Goggomobil cars. From 1953 on, load-carrying scooters were built as well. They had the 200 cc engine and 9.5 bhp. They were able to carry 250 kg.

Read more at Wikipedia.org