1954 Kaiser Darrin. Photo Credit: RM Sothebys<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nA new Kaiser arrived in 1951, with a new design by Darrin. But it did little to help sales, which continued to slide, totaling 32,000 for 1952 and 28,000 for 1953. But instead of restyling the Kaiser, or manufacturing a V-8 to match the competition, the company introduced the compact Henry J, which proved to be flop. Even America’s first fiberglass sports car, the Kaiser-Darrin, failed to elicit buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 1954, with cash diminishing, Kaiser acquires Willys-Overland for $63 million and renamed Willys Motors. Kaiser production was consolidated at Willys Toledo plant, with Kaiser selling its Willow Run facility to General Motors in 1954 for $24 million. Many Kaiser dealers become Jeep dealers as tooling for the 1954 Kaisers was saved and moved to Industrias Kaiser Argentina, where it was sold as the Kaiser Carabela through 1962. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in the states, Kaiser returned Willys Motors to profitability by 1956, renaming it Kaiser Jeep Corp. in 1962. It would be sold to American Motors Corp. in 1970 after Henry\u2019s death in 1969.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many view Henry Kaiser\u2019s car-building career as a failure, which is true if your tunnel vision stops at 1954. But the following 15 years proved far more successful than the previous eight, meriting a re-examination of his skill as an auto manufacturer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week in 1947, the first production Kaiser and Frazer automobiles roll off the Willow Run, Michigan assembly line \u2014 they would be the last from an American automaker until Tesla. Check out the story at TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13752,"featured_media":243781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,905],"tags":[7694,11090,11091,11089,3711,3660,11092,7693],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243786"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243847,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243786\/revisions\/243847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243786"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=243786"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=243786"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=243786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}