[OMC-Boats] OMC Myth Busted -- The Deluxe 17 and Sweet 16 Windshield Origin

Okay guys -- after years of hearing this OMC "urban legend" or myth about the Deluxe 17 windshield design originating in Detroit I decided to do some additional research. Here are my findings:

The unique OMC 17 Deluxe - Sweet 16 windshield was made expressly for OMC by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. The unique industrial design work was by Myron Stevens, OMC in-house designer, who joined OMC from Brooks Stevens Associates in Milwaukee (no family relation to Brooks). You will recall Brooks Stevens did Evinrude's product styling and logo designs for many years. See: http://hhscott.com/evinrude/brooks_stevens.htm

The tooling for forming the Deluxe 17 - Sweet 16 windshield (USA market-only*), was designed, funded and owned by OMC and used by PPG in their Pittsburg, PA plants to produce the OMC USA-market windshields. The windshield was made of "float" plate glass ( a process relatively new in 1960), in which the molten glass is floated on a pan of molten lead and allowed to solidify there, producing a smooth surface and optically uniform thickness, just like ground and polished plate glass. This is a very touchy process in which the glass (in a plastic state, maintained by gas flame heat), is laid on a flex frame which warps the glass into its unique curved "sagged" shape and then is rapidly cooled by air jets to temper it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass

The tubular stainless steel perimeter molding was installed by another company with a rubber insert all around that was bonded right to the glass to protect the edge of the windshield. This was needed so the ball sockets for the tilting pivots could be welded right to the molding before it was put on. Windshields were shipped from Pittsburg, PA eventually making their way to Waukegan, IL for final assembly.

It is important to point out that these marine-application windshields were manufactured of non-laminated tempered safety glass, which cannot be used in the U.S. for automotive windshields. Automotive laminated plate glass has been mandatory since 1927, which has a thin layer of flexible clear plastic film called polyvinyl butyral (PVB) sandwiched between two or more pieces of glass.

So, for the OMC Deluxe 17 - Sweet 16 marine windshield THERE NEVER WAS A CONNECTION WITH ANY AUTOMOTIVE WINDSHIELD, though some of the same manufacturing processes were used for both, but DEFINITELY not the same shape.

Next time you have your Deluxe 17 or Sweet 16 out, enjoy the view. Take extremely good care of that rare piece of glass; as it will be hard to come by a replacement. The re-tooling costs to reproduce this baby would definitely be astronomical!

Myth most definitely busted!!

* Canadian market, Peterbourgh-built boats used Plexiglas windshields

Lee Shuster
OMC Boats Myth Buster

Keep 'en floatin'
Received on Tuesday, 12 May 2009