Kaiser-Frazer

Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph W. Frazer founded The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation on July 25, 1945. In 1946 K-F displayed prototypes of their two new cars at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Kaiser was of an advanced front wheel drive design while the Frazer was an upscale conventional rear wheel drive car. The production costs and time available prevented the front wheel drive design from seeing production so the new 1947 Kaiser and Frazer shared bodies and powertrains. Being some of the first newly designed cars to hit the market while the "Big Three" were still marketing their pre-war designs, the Kaisers and Frazers made quite an exciting entrance.

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Henry J. Kaiser - July 25 - 1945 - 1946

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Henry Kaiser had no automotive marketing experience while Joseph Frazer did, having been president of the Graham-Paige Corporation prior to WWII. Henry Kaiser believed in pressing on in the face of adversity; Joseph Frazer was more pragmatic. As the market for K-F products slowed in 1949 Kaiser pushed for more production creating an oversupply of cars that took until mid-1950 to sell. Kaiser and Frazer continued at odds until Frazer left the company in 1951 and the car with the Frazer nameplate was dropped at the end of a short 10,000 unit production run.

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In 1953 Kaiser bought the ailing Willys-Overland company for US$63,381,175 and merged the Kaiser and Willys operations together under the name Willys Motors. The decision was then made to exit the passenger car market which was accomplished at the end of the 1955 model year. By 1956 Willys Motors was building only utility vehicles, many for export, and was turning a healthy profit. In 1958 the company was renamed the Kaiser Jeep Corporation.

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In 1970 the Kaiser Jeep Corporation was sold to to American Motors Corporation who continued to manufacture Jeep vehicles until AMC was purchased by Chrysler in 1987 for $360 million. Chrysler wanted the Jeep vehicle line and had estimated that for them to create a similar competing product and build a reputation to match would have cost in excess of $1 billion.

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Kaiser in Argentina

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In 1951 Argentina sent their emissary, Brigadier General San Martín, to the United States in an attempt to convince an auto manufacturer to build cars in Argentina. In 1954 Kaiser was the only one to accept the offer with the rest believing the market was too small to justify the investment. But they didn't have the rugged products Kaiser did. On January 19, 1955 Kaiser and the government of Argentina signed an agreement to permit Kaiser to manufacture automobiles and trucks in Argentina. In February, Kaiser created a wholly owned subsidiary named Kaiser Automores, the holding company which in turn owned part of the newly created Industrias Kaiser Argentina S.A. (IKA), the manufacturing and marketing arm. Other partners in IKA included the government-owned vehicle manufacturer IAME and private investors. In August Kaiser applied for and got an import license to bring in 1,021 completed cars, manufacturing equipment and spare parts from the USA. Groundbreaking for the new factory was in March of 1955 with the first Jeep vehicle rolling out of the plant on 27 April 1956.

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The new Argentine factory was built in the city of Santa Isabel in the province of Córdoba with the Kaiser Manhattan being rechristened the Kaiser Carabela - named after a type of Spanish sailing ship. The USA vinyl and fabric interior was replaced with a more rugged leather interior, the speedometer was recalibrated in kilometers with the temperature, oil, and fuel gauge annotations in Spanish and the spring rates were increased to accommodate the unimproved Argentine roads. Oddly, the dash castings with annotations for vent, heater, headlight and wiper controls remained in English. No consideration was given to offering an automatic transmission due to the anticipated difficulty in obtaining service in remote towns. Production started on the Carabela on 25 July 1958 and, in the remaining months of year, 2,158 cars were built. IKA was also building Jeep vehicles at the Cordoba factory and assembled 20,454 Jeeps in 1958 alone. The combined Carabela-Jeep production of 22,612 units was 81% of all vehicles manufactured in Argentina in 1958 with the only competition being a state-run utility vehicle manufacturer. Many have questioned the wisdom of building IKA automobile factory in remote Santa Isabel which was far from ports and transportation hubs but the principle reason is that Córdoba was General San Martín's home province and he had strong ties to President Juan Perón.

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In 1962 the Carabela, the "Gran coche argentino" (the Great Argentine Car), ended production with some 15,000 cars assembled providing elegant transportation for the doctors, bankers and other notables in Argentina. The Carabela had some stable mates in 1960-62 in the form of an Alfa Romeo 1900 sedan derivative named the Bergantin (another type of Spanish sailing ship) and an Argentine-manufactured Renault Dauphine (badged IKA Dauphine). In 1962 Rambler variants licensed from AMC would replace all of these. The final form of the AMC variants was the potent Torino which saw a lot of racing on international circuits. In 1970 Kaiser sold IKA to Renault.

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