The Glastron Factory: How One Corporate Raider Destroyed 1,600 Jobs and 50 Years of Boat Empire

The Glastron Factory: How One Corporate Raider Destroyed 1,600 Jobs and 50 Years of Boat Empire. At its peak, Glastron Boats of Austin, Texas produced a new boat every four and a half minutes. The largest boat plant in the world under a single roof. 1,600 workers. 24,000 boats a year. In 1973, the James Bond film Live and Let Die used a Glastron GT-150 in a Louisiana bayou chase that set the Guinness World Record for the longest filmed speedboat jump in cinema history. Bob Hammond and three partners had started the company in a rented Austin garage in 1956 with $20,000 and the belief that fiberglass was the future of recreational boating. They made twenty-four boats that first year. By year three they were making four thousand. Hammond developed the Aqualift V-hull — a deep-V design that got boats on plane faster and ran smoother in rough water than anything the industry had seen. In seventeen years they built it into the industry sales leader and the largest boat plant on earth. Then Irwin Jacobs bought Glastron in 1987. 🔔 Subscribe before you go. 💬 Drop your Glastron story in the comments. . . . . . . . . #GlastronBoats #vintageboats #GlastronGT150 #JamesBondBoat #BoatHistory #americanmanufacturing