It turned out that the Dixie Region of the
Kaiser-Frazer Owner’s Club was having a rally or meeting of some kind. (For
more information on the club, go to http://www.kfclub.com/)
The gathering was breaking up but we got a good look at some moderately unattractive but interesting looking autos
as well as some absolutely spectacular old cars! I must admit that one must be of a certain
age to remember Kaiser-Frazer automobiles.
Even I was just barely a teenager when they went out of business…
The auto shown above is what I believe to
be a 1955 Willys coupe. Willys-Overland
was purchased by Kaiser Motors in 1953.
The ‘new’ Willys Motor Company produced its last passenger car in the
USA in 1955, although the Willys ‘Aero’ continued in production in Brazil until
the 1970’s. FYI…Willys built Jeeps for
the military for decades…and the Willys name figured into auto history from
1908 until production ceased in Brazil. Of course, the production of ‘Jeep’ vehicles
continues today via the Chrysler Group LLC.
I believe that this sedan is a Frazer
Deluxe…perhaps from 1948 or 1949. It’s a
big car compared to most of today’s vehicles. It kind of reminds me of the Hudson Hornets
that my stepfather used to favor…except that the windows on the Hornet seemed
smaller and it looked a bit more like a tank than this car does.
On July 25, 1945, Henry Kaiser and Joseph
Frazer announced that they were forming a company to build automobiles. Kaiser was an established and very wealthy
industrialist and Frazer was a top executive at the Packard Automobile Company. They leased the Willow Run Michigan factory
that had been used to build planes for the war and by 1946, they built 10,000
automobiles. The Big 3 Automakers were
scrambling to move from a war time footing to peacetime, while trying to design
new autos for the post-war marketplace.
In 1947, Kaiser-Frazer built 100,000 cars. But by the end of 1955, with Mr. Frazer
having already departed, the Company built its last passenger car.
Unlike today, one can never say that all
of these cars looked the same! This Kaiser
Manhattan came all the way down from Indiana for this rally. The 1954 Manhattan was the first production
model in the USA to offer a supercharged engine. I think that this is a 1953 model…
Kaiser merged Kaiser Automotive and the
Willys-Overland Company together in 1953.
The center of production had moved to Toledo Ohio after a huge fire
knocked out the Willow Run facility in Michigan. Production of the Kaiser continued for some
time in Argentina… Other operations were
centered in the Netherlands.
Additional information regarding the
company and its products can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser-Frazer.
When we saw this stunning beauty…our
mouths hit the pavement! This is a 1954 Darrin-Kaiser-Frazer
or ‘DKF’. If you were wondering, it was named after the
designer, not Bobby Darin, the singer. This
was the first production fiber glass sports car to make it to market in the USA, beating
the Corvette by only 1 month. Only 435
of these beautiful looking cars were ever built, but because of their rarity
and appearance, over 300 of them still survive today. The designer, Butch Darrin, put 304 bhp
Cadillac V-8’s in the last 100 of them… Would that be fun to drive or
what!!
With its standard engine, the Darrin sold
for $3,668, which was a lot of money for its time… With the V-8, the price tag
reached $4,350 each. A few of them were
even outfitted with supercharged engines.
This is another Darrin/DFK. One of the most unique features of this car
was its sliding doors. Butch Darrin
patented the design. He just hated the
look of an open car door. None of us had
ever seen a Darrin-Kaiser-Fraser or DKF before…and, if you total them up,
that’s over a lot of years! For more on
this car, just go to http://auto.howstuffworks.com/kaiser-darrin.htm.
Despite the beauty of the “Darrin”, this
is the car that we all voted for as ‘Best in the Show’! (If there had been a
vote that is…) This is a 1951 Frazer Manhattan Convertible Sedan. This car would be the last American 4-door
convertible on the market in the USA until the 1961 Lincoln Continental was
introduced.
Henry Kaiser is a story unto
himself. He’s known as the father of
modern American Shipbuilding, having established Kaiser Shipyards and being
responsible for the war time construction of 2,710 Liberty Ships…which in turn
enabled the USA to win WWII. He also
founded Kaiser Aluminum, Kaiser Steel and Kaiser Permanente Healthcare
Systems. For more on this true American
success story, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_J._Kaiser.
We really liked the
lines of this elegant convertible which had been driven down from Wisconsin. We agreed that we all miss the time when
almost all the cars really looked different than each other. Today, thanks to environmental requirements,
cost and the price of gasoline, most cars and even SUV’s look too much alike to
be visually exciting. For much more on
the Kaiser-Frazer-Willys automobiles and the organization(s) behind them, just
click on http://www.allpar.com/cars/adopted/kaiser.html.
Just click on any of the photos to
enlarge them…
Thanks for stopping by to have a look at
some classic old American made automobiles!
Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
Looks like a nice stumble-into-event
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