Borg-Warner Corporation (BWC) is known for its production of Blendex, Cycolac, Cycoloy, Cycopac, Cycovin, Decoloy, and Marbon ABS. The company was created in 1928 by the merger of four Midwestern manufacturing companies: Borg & Beck Company, Warner Gear Company, Marvel-Schebler Carburetor Corporation, and Mechanics Universal Joint Company. These four successful companies had all supplied innovative parts to U.S. car manufacturers.

In 1948 Borg-Warner was contracted by Ford to produce half of its automatic transmissions. Foreign carmakers, including Jaguar, wanted so many of the firm’s transmissions that a United Kingdom subsidiary was created. Borg-Warner continued to be heavily dependent upon the automotive business with more than half of the firm’s output was still in automotive parts in 1953, but under the leadership of Roy and Robert Ingersoll, the company also diversified into appliances, heating and air conditioning, chemicals, financial services, and protective services, allowing Borg-Warner to weather the trend toward integration among U.S. carmakers. In 1958 Borg-Warner’s contract to manufacture Ford-O-Matic transmissions ended. The firm also lost other customers such as Massey-Ferguson.

Borg-Warner’s role in plastics began in 1934 with the purchase of a very the small Marsene Corporation of Gary, Indiana, where chemist Robert Shattuck had developed cyclo rubber, a product that when properly treated was an excellent insulator for electrical wiring. This proved a critical material in the Second World War, when Marsene’s wire cyclo-rubber-coated cables were successfully used in radar production which allowed Britain a secret defensive advantage in The Battle of Britain.

Marsene was renamed the Marbon Chemical Division in 1954, and played a critical role in the development of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) resins, marketed under the name Cycolac.

In 1958 the Western Electric Company contracted Marbon to supply Cycolac for its telephones, and other buyers soon followed. A plant was constructed near Parkersburg, West Virginia, to handle the sudden demand. Between 1961 and 1967 Cycolac sales jumped 350%, cornering half the market in ABS resins. By 1967 chemicals accounted for about $100 million of BWC’s sales.

From the 1960’s through the 1980’s Marbon grew wide a rapid expansion of products, applications and ventures. Product lines added included Blendex, polystyrene, Purafil, Plastic Pipe, Engineering Blocks, Plastic Processing Machines, and design services of Centaur Engineering. Dann Deaver was co-founder of Centaur Engineering, which was in the race car business. Marbon decided the best way to promote the use of plastic in automobiles would be to build an entire car out of plastic. Working with Deaver, Marbon constructed the first plastic prototype in 1964 which was displayed at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) convention in Detroit in January 1965. Called the CRV, (for Cycolac Research Vehicle.), it was a two-seater roadster with a wrap-around windscreen, and featured a rear-mounted, 4-cylinder water-cooled engine (for a history and photos of the car see: http://www.c-we.com/piranha/page1.htm).

See:

Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc. Facts and Figures of the Plastics Industry, 1979 edition (New York, 1979).