I am looking for any information about the closing and auction at Centaur Engineering in the Detroit area in the early 1970's. Centaur was a division of Marbon Chemical & Borg Warner. They designed and built the Cycolac Research Vehicles (CRV) that later became the AMT Piranha. They also built another plastic bodied car called "Formacar" and other Cycolac items like furniture, campers, and boats. Eventually Marbon closed Centaur and auctioned off all the equipment. Any information about the closure or sale would be of interest. Thanks!
hi -- i have the one and only 1969 jeep bolide xj002 from jeep/centaur/marbon. i have a lot of info from dann deaver about the car. in an audio tape he mentioned that most items were sold off by borg-warner except for the bolide which he kept. his family also has an original pirahna and there appears to be one other still in existence (original or kit is unknown). contact me at jeepbolidexj002@hotmail.com for for info. i will provide you info if i have it.
I worked at Centaur when it closed. There wasn't an auction at that time. My self and Jim Sorenson were kept on site for about two weeks after it closed to put the Urethane equipment to bed. A man named Clyd Prudin from Borg Warner was sent to close the place an Jim convinced him to keep me around to properly shut down the equipment. At the time we had a 100 pound per minute Polyquip foam machine which Clyd eventually sold to Jim, and a 80 Lb/min VTE foam machine which went to Marbon in West Virginia. Jim also bought the Blazer Roof Press and the tooling and all the engineering drawings for the Formacar which he is currently in the process of building in Oregon. I don't remember what happened to the Blue Goose forming machine. After the closing I went to work for Dan Deaver in their new company called Tecnic Corp. I worked with them for about 2 years while we built a boat plant in Grayling Mi. producing the Del Quay Dory.
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