Awhile back Hemmings Motor News reposted my article on Brooks Stevens, with a gratuitous opinion: “Perhaps Langworth’s tendency toward purple prose in this profile of Brooks Stevens in Special Interest Autos #71, October 1982, is appropriate, given the picture he paints of the legendary designer.” Nice to be remembered, but, er, Hemmings paid only for first rights and is therefore in copyright violation.

An old editor at SIA wrote: “Nothing purple—it reads like an essay in The New Yorker.” (Ah, if only Hemmings paid New Yorker rates!)  Another colleague wrote: “Not purple, maybe faint mauve.” A third: “Ugh, I can’t read it. The prose is too purple for me. They really think the Excalibur J can run with a Jaguar XK120?” But Tony Stevens wrote: “As the current owner of the first Excalibur J, I can attest that it can run competitively with an XK120. Right, Tony! The XK120 was a great car—but the youngsters have swallowed too much purple prose about it.

Herewith I republish my purple-mauve piece on my late friend Brooks Stevens. Readers may judge for themselves.

“The judgment of the historian”

“You’ll have to resolve the conflict between Dutch Darrin and Kip Stevens,” I was told after being assigned my first automotive article assignment, on Kaiser-Frazer, in 1970. The origins of the landmark 1951 Kaiser were at the time still unclear. Both Darrin and Stevens claimed it. (See “Kaiser Capers.”) Neither was complimentary in describing the efforts of the other. “It might be best not to press the matter,” a friend warned. The publisher disagreed: “Hear both sides and make the judgment of the historian.”

I didn’t know I was a historian! But I wrote to Stevens at his studio near Milwaukee and said in effect, “Tell me everything you remember about the 1951 Kaiser.”

By return mail came a large white folder with gilt lettering, containing a thick pile of photographs and a long, detailed letter documenting Brooks “Kip” Stevens’ role as a design consultant to Kaiser-Frazer. Within a year we’d met, and our friendship withstood the “judgment of the historian,” which appeared in Last Onslaught on Detroit in 1975. (For used copies search on bookfinder.com.)

The judgment did not satisfy Kip, and in turn produced another white and gilt folder with further documentation. On this subject it would be accurate to say that we had differences but not misunderstandings. Cordiality never suffered, for Stevens was a master of cordiality.

Stevens as I knew him

He was a tall, good looking man who belied his age, whose appearance and demeanor reflected what Cole Porter called High Society. For Stevens there was only one way to fly to Paris: Concorde. And one way to get to England: first class on the QE2. His personal tastes reflected similar standards, producing an aura of refined elegance. He took pains about everything. Meeting him, people were impressed but never overawed, because he was so natural, so full of courtesy and fun.

It was not hard to gain Kip’s acquaintance, whether you were a mechanic in overalls or the President of General Motors. Along with an inborn civility and an interest in others went an all-encompassing love for cars, an encyclopedic knowledge, and a streak of nihilism.

Stevens once invited my friend Bill Tilden to Wisconsin to drive his Henry J-based sports car, the Excalibur J, at Elkhart Lake. Brooks himself drove there in his personal Excalibur. This produced a helicopter-assisted roadblock of the rambunctious designer. It seemed he had violated most Wisconsin road ordinances plus several they hadn’t thought of yet.

Picture Brooks, trailing a silk scarf, driving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assurance.” Picture next an army of gendarmerie, including aircraft. Failing to catch him in their cruisers, they block the road ahead. Now picture the nearest constable (seven feet tall as they all are). Jerking his thumb at the Excalibur’s sartorially splendid driver, he shouts: YOU—OUT! Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

A truly lovely man

He had vast generosity, which did not always function in his favor. One press night at the New York Automobile Show, Kip arrived at René and Maurice Dreyfus’ famous automotive watering hole, “Le Chanteclair,” with a large retinue of admirers. The brothers Dreyfus were hardpressed to seat such a large assembly. They eventually did, at a long table with Brooks as centerpiece. Here he held forth for three hours to his impromptu court.

Le Chanteclair was never the place for a cheap meal. The bill came, for what I recall was uncomfortably close to a thousand 1974 dollars. Brooks quietly laid down his American Express card. Those who had no intention of socking him with that tab surreptitiously handed him cash, but a good half the company didn’t bother. There was no sign that our host was in the least disappointed: the measure of a man who spared no expense for the pleasure of an evening among friends, provided your description of “friends” is fairly elastic.

Stevens triumphs

I once stole a line from Schlitz and called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous.” He was one of the ten charter Fellows of the Industrial Design Society of America. To the automotive trade he brought impeccable credentials. Ultimately he would contribute designs to over 40 makes of car. One of his earliest associations was with Willys-Overland, during and after World War II. He conceived of Willys’ most interesting products: the the first all-steel station wagon (1946); and the 1948-51 Jeepster, the world’s last production touring car.

A contributor to Kaiser-Frazer from almost the outset of that venture, Brooks proposed the first practical facelifts for the plug-ugly 1947-48 models, including wagons and hardtops, which they desperately needed but rejected.

Management didn’t take his advice, but assigned him a design competition for the new-generation 1951 Kaiser. It is the consensus today that the basic shape selected was Darrin’s, but the contest was not winner-take-all (see Kaiser photo above). Kip was simultaneously busy on a score of accounts in a half dozen countries, with corporations like Allis-Chalmers, Miller Beer, Briggs & Stratton, Evinrude, Lawn-Boy, 3M, Outboard Marine Aviation, Sears Roebuck, and Club Xanadu in Costa Rica. At the time of the Kaiser styling contest he was involved with Alfa Romeo on the 6C 2500. Darrin had only the Kaiser project on his plate. Had it been a one-on-one contest, things might have been different.

Kaiser and beyond

And many of his contributions were used on Kaiser products. After the Kaisers bought Willys in 1953, Stevens designed the Jeep Wagoneer, a shape that lasted 30 years. He always referred to this and his other styling projects in the plural: “we” did this or that. He simply wanted to make it clear that Brooks Stevens Associates was not a one-man company.

Kip also did his own thing on a Kaiser chassis. While Darrin was placing a pretty fiberglass body over a stock Henry J chassis to create the Kaiser-Darrin, Stevens moved in the opposite direction with the Excalibur J. This was a highly modified, dual purpose, road-and-track sports car. It could pace the vaunted Jaguar XK120, and often did in competition.

In the late Fifties, Stevens created the Excalibur-Valkyrie-Scimitar design exercise, which showed what could be done with aluminum. In the 1960s he reskinned the Aero-Willys for Willys-Overland do Brasil. This facelift persuaded Studebaker President Sherwood Egbert to let him modernize the aging “Loewy coupes.” The result was the sinfully beautiful Gran Tursimo Hawk of 1962-64.

Next Kip applied crisp, modern styling to the dowdy Studebaker Lark, giving it an extra lease on life. He produced the first sliding-roof station wagon in the Wagonaire, and his Studebaker prototypes for a new generation of cars were things of breathtaking beauty. (See “Why Studebaker Failed.”)

Faithful but unfortunate

Unhappily, most of his automotive efforts were for dead or dying companies. Had Kip worked for say, Chrysler, they would be more famous. Still, he managed to cap his career with an unequivocal success. This was the Excalibur line of “modern classics” based on a successive series of Mercedes-Benz commencing with the immortal SSK. Among “replicars” the Excalibur was the best selling, best engineered, and most carefully built.

Automobiles were but one facet of a half-century career, but they were his first love. He established the Brooks Stevens Automotive Museum, small and select, including some of the finest: the Packard Twin Six, Duesenberg Indy racer, Brescia Bugatti,  Mercedes-Benz 500K and 540K, Cord L29 and 812, Marmon V-12. Its frontispiece was a staggeringly beautiful 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, the world’s fastest prewar sports car. He added many of his own personal designs, like the Jeepster and Brazilian Willys, and the Alfa 6C 2500.

Clifford Brooks Stevens (1911-1995)

Kip did not come in for the universal plaudits he deserved. Too often, casual observers saw only him as hopeless exponent of chrome and tailfins. This is very shortsighted, for it fails to take the full measure of the man.

He was one of the supporting pillars of the automotive community: manufacturers and collectors. His whimsical, brilliant, imaginative, formal and radical designs were truly unique. His non-automotive work served America’s great corporations. Many of his designs, still around today, gained international renown.

He was as well a great companion, not at all self-centered (rare among designers). Always he drew out the best in his friends—car nuts, fellow stylists, lowly automotive writers. No one escaped his attraction. Everyone became proud and delighted to have their work encouraged by a man of such distinction.

There are many ways to measure wealth, but Kip Stevens banked his greatest treasure in the hearts of his friends. We cherish his memory.

Further reading

“The Greatness of Alex Tremulis,” Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer,” 2020

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” first of two parts, 2019

“All the Luck: Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” first of three parts, 2017

“Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep,” first of three parts, 2011

Alex and Tucker

Like Bob Bourke’s famous 1953 Studebaker “Loewy coupe,” the 1948 Tucker was almost entirely the work of one designer. Of course many helped, and both Bourke and Tremulis gave them credit. But as near as one comes to designing a car by oneself, they did.

Alex set to work in a studio at Tucker’s large, ex-Dodge plant in Chicago. As chief designer he had to inject practicality into Preston Tucker’s enthusiasm. First concepts included a car with cycle fenders that turned with the wheels, a periscope rearview scanner, and vast expanses of compound-curved glass. Tremulis argued that the first two ideas were impractical. As for glass, such curvature exceeded the technology of the contemporary glass industry.

“It was hard enough,” Alex said, “to add Preston’s third central headlamp, which he wanted to turn with the wheels. Or those big doors inset into the roof—along with a rear-mounted air-cooled engine.” (Clever ideas were not always thought out: Tucker soon had to issue covers for the swivel headlamp, which tended to blind oncoming drivers on curves. And contemporary technology was not good enough to keep rain from pouring on your head when you opened one of those inset doors.)

With a stock issue pending and dealer previews set for mid-1947, it was a battle against the clock. Tremulis developed a full-size clay model, adopting bumper ideas from fellow designers. Dealers greeted a steel prototype with loud huzzahs on June 19th. Tucker dubbed it the “Tin Goose.” It looked bloomin’ marvelous! Or at least drastically different from any contemporary car.

Performance and aerodynamics

I once asked Alex for his Tucker driving impressions. “The handling, acceleration and top speed were impressive,” he said. “We always considered ten-second 0-60 times slow by about a second and a half because of the [shift] delay. Third was utterly amazing for passing, and on several occasions I reached 105 mph with it.” (Most Tuckers used Cord four-speed transmissions with the Bendix electro-vacuum shifting.)

For comparison, Tucker bought a Cadillac coupe, reputedly America’s fastest car at the time. The Cadillac, Tremulis recalled,

could reach 80 mph in 22 seconds; the Tucker was doing 80 in 15. At 22 seconds the Tucker was at 90. By the time the Cadillac reached 85 mph in our many drag races, the Tucker could hit 100. At sea level our top speed was 122 mph, though the Marquess de Portago was timed at 132 at Sebring. At Bonneville, where the altitude is 4200 feet and the air less dense, Tucker #10 was clocked on three occasions at 130 mph, in spite of loss of horsepower due to altitude.

* * *

Such numbers seem unbelievable in 130-inch wheelbase car with only 166 horsepower. The answer was quite simple, Alex explained:

I deliberately designed it to be as streamlined as possible, without being too controversial. Eighty percent of the bottom was under-panned. The rear-mounted engine also helped. A typical front engine requires an air intake area of some 250 square inches. Once trapped, the air has no place to go, except to spill out through the hood opening or underneath. The Tucker rear fender air intakes required only forty square inches of area—air entered the radiator core and exited through the rear grille. There were also little details—for example, no external rain gutters.

Good streamlining, Alex insisted, depends on details. “It all adds up.” Breathtaking, you might say in 1948. In Chicago tests, the Tucker’s coefficient of drag (CD) ranged around .30, similar to a modern car’s. This was unheard of at a time when a Lincoln CD was .55. Even the VW Beetle was .48.

Tucker: the reality

Although Tucker’s venture ended in lawsuits and bankruptcy, Alex Tremulis was blameless. (Nor will we learn much from the hagiographic film which set up Tucker as the victim of Detroit moguls. If GM really wanted to put him out of business, why did they sell him Delco electrics?) For all his engineering know-how, Preston Tucker was a smalltime promoter who didn’t know his way around business. He had no concept of the resources needed to launch a new car company.

Alex Tremulis pointed to the comparison with another new postwar car company, Kaiser-Frazer. K-F’s initial capitalization was $52 million, and it wasn’t enough. Chevrolet set aside $100 million just to redesign its 1949 models. Henry J. Kaiser later admitted, “we should have raised $200 million.” Tucker raised $15 million. (For today’s value, multiply by 11.)

Kaiser floated two stock issues, admitting in its prospectus that it was a gamble, stating what it hoped to accomplish. Tucker floated one stock issue, promising the world, and found himself in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They charged him with false statements, making indirect payments to promoters, assigning engine work to his mother’s machine shop, and other irregularities.

Significant nothwithstanding

Like Tucker, Kaiser promised things he couldn’t deliver: unit body-frame construction, torsion bar suspension, front-wheel-drive. Unlike Tucker, Kaiser quickly regrouped. He substituted a car he could deliver, which people could actually buy. Kaiser built a production line covering millions of square feet and was building 200 cars a day almost from the start. Tucker sent fifty pilot cars down a conveyor and called it a production line. Nevertheless—isn’t there always a nevertheless?—Tucker conceived and Tremulis developed one impressive motorcar. And Alex stuck it to the end, working every day, long after his paychecks stopped. Finally the plant closed and the doors locked.

Preston Tucker died in 1956, but Alex continued to toy with his ideas. In 1963 he sketched drawings for a revival Tucker called the Talisman, one of Preston’s original model names. Its coefficient of drag was .25. With radial tires and Alex’s proposed mid-mounted Oldsmobile V8, he expected it would do 150 mph. Forty years later his ideas triumphed. In 1987 the Society of Automotive Engineers honored him for “one of  the significant automobiles of the past half-century.”

“A penchant for losers”

Alex engaged in MG distribution for awhile after Tucker folded, but still had a yen for design. “I guess I had a penchant for losers,” he mused. “By 1951 I was chief of Advanced Styling at Kaiser-Frazer.” They might have hired him because he showed up in a snowstorm driving a Lincoln Continental with the top down and trailing a white scarf. “I always liked to make an entrance.”

The job didn’t last long. Kaiser abandoned its Willow Run, Michigan plant in 1953 and ran a rump operation in Toledo, Ohio before expiring in 1955. But Alex enjoyed his experience, particularly the designers he worked with. In a business where egos are rampant, his generous acknowledgement of them is worth recording.

Kaiser-Frazer’s stylists

Alex called Herb Weissinger, who turned Dutch Darrin’s 1948 clay model into the ground-breaking 1951 Kaiser, “a maestro in the execution of a line on a surface. His chrome appliqués were done with the perfection of a Cellini.” Arnott “Buzz” Grisinger, Alex said, was “the greatest sculptural design modeler. A quick sketch of a beautiful car floating in space sans wheels was all he needed to attack a full-size clay model. The body engineers told me they never surface-developed any irregularities. They took templates off his clays and used the lines verbatim.” Bob Robillard “was indispensable in refining and working out the endless details for production. I best remember Bob sitting in the front seat of a prototype for weeks on end, personally modeling the instrument panel…he said that in order to design it, you have to live behind it.”

“Advanced Design” at Kaiser-Frazer sounds like an oxymoron. But in 1951 sales were up and they still thought they had a chance. The Tremulis talent for naming cars surfaced when he suggested “Sun Goddess” for a prototype hardtop Kaiser the company considered but never built. “I named it for an Egyptian gal I knew,” Alex quipped.

His first K-F assignment was the Allstate, a facelifted Henry J sold through Sears, Roebuck catalogues in 1952-53: “I did a hurry-up remake of the grille, putting in two horizontals and a little triangular piece, made up a jet plane type bonnet mascot and put on the Allstate logo with a map of the United States. Voila, there it was!” But he was just getting started.

Might-have-been: the Kaiser 105

His proudest achievement was the “New Composite Body Program”: a complete restyle for the Kaiser and Henry J for 1955 or 1956—cars that never arrived. The problem was twofold. Not only did Kaiser need updated styling; they badly needed performance. But there were only underwhelming sixes and fours.

Reprising his experience at Tucker, Tremulis stressed streamlining and light weight. They slightly downsized the new Kaiser; the Henry J gained needed interior room by going from a 100- to a 105-inch wheelbase. Alex recalled:

The 105 design called for a flat four-cylinder engine coupled to front wheel drive. With its lightness [2500 pounds] and small frontal area it would perform really well. Without a change in engines, we expected 35 miles per gallon and a top speed of over 100 mph. A planned V-6 would have given greater performance. It was another Tucker, years ahead in concept and function…If the 105 had been built, I honestly believe I’d be telling a different story today.

Concluded in Part 3: “Streamlining and Speed Records”

Delving in

While I received no extra pay for writing the Kaiser-Frazer book, I did have the use of an expense account for travel. That was where Bill Tilden came through again. He helped me track down and interview many of people responsible for the cars Kaiser-Frazer built. Others were located through the deep tentacles of Automobile Quarterly, its contacts in the industry. We also searched for archives large and small.

Our greatest archival find was at Kaiser Industries in Oakland, California: the Kaiser-Frazer photo files, placed on loan for AQ’s use. They documented virtually every design drawing, clay model and prototype the company built.

Bill and I pored over them for several days, bleary-eyed as the secrets of the company came to life. Fortunately we were able to reproduce many in the book.

There were so many, it was hard to choose. Toward the end of the second day I picked a photo up, saying, “Ever see one like that before?” And Bill said, “I think we’ve seen a dozen like that, but let’s use it. It has a good looking tailpipe.” Later the archive disappeared. I don’t know if it ever resurfaced. I hope it’s in good hands.

“You know,” I said to Bill after Oakland, “this is going to be one helluva book. We’ve found this massive archive, and all these people to interview. All concentrated within ten years. I have a chance to go into far more detail than if I were writing a history of, say, General Motors.” So it proved.

Kaiser-Frazer people

As historians (as we optimistically called ourselves) we were just in time. Many of the principals, including Henry J. Kaiser, were dead. His son Edgar didn’t want to go on record, though fortunately other Kaiser people did. Many were aging or infirm, but happy to reminisce. The book made good its claim to be “An Intimate Behind the Scenes Study of the Postwar American Car Industry,” because we were able to locate and talk to so many key people.

One night in south Georgia we found Henry C. McCaslin, chief engineer of the stillborn front-wheel-drive Kaiser. Mac drank too much early in life and wasn’t long for this world. He told us what he knew, testifying to Henry Kaiser’s zest for clean-slate thinking. “I loved that old guy,” he said.

Mac was sad that the front-wheel-drive car Kaiser wanted to build didn’t work out. “We built two prototypes,” he said. (I have since heard the figure six, but Mac was there at the time; none has ever surfaced.) “But Henry and Joe Frazer needed production more than innovation. So they spent their money gearing up Willow Run.”

Willow Run was Henry Ford’s immense ex-bomber factory outside of Detroit. It was a mile long—at the time the longest car plant under one roof. Hickman Price signed the lease in 1945. Later, Kaiser-Frazer bought it from the War Assets Administration. Just two years later, K-F was the leading independent car producer—out-producing Studebaker, Nash, Packard, Hudson and Willys.

K-F’s inspired engineers

We were lucky to find Ralph Isbrandt, chief engineer on the groundbreaking ’51 Kaiser project. The poor guy was dying of cancer, but he spent many hours with me and was a leading source of engineering background.

Ralph was hired in 1948 by Kaiser’s engineering vice-president Dean Hammond, who told him to ignore the organization chart and deal with him direct. “Hammond was not one of the Kaisers’ California ‘orange juicers’ we Detroit hands joked about,” Ralph remembered. “He had a good staff…

“John Widman was chief body engineer—his father had founded the Widman Body Company, later bought by Briggs. He had the idea for the ultra-thin A-pillars, created by turning them on their sides. The experimental engineers were West coast guys, George Harbert and Ben Edmonston. Frazer recruits were George Henry, later motor engineer for American Motors; and Les Klauser from Chrysler, who ran K-F’s engine factory.” It was a true team effort, Detroit and California guys, Isbrandt told me. “If only the two sides had maintained that relationship, things might have been different.”

Roadability in the Fifties

From early 1948, the engineers turned entirely to an all-new ‘51 Kaiser. Isbrandt continued:

We wanted a low center of gravity and a unit body. We took a Nash apart, but decided that Nash had just put a conventional frame on a standard body. John Widman said we could get close to unitized construction in stiffness and rigidity.

That’s why we used a great many body mounts, each carefully located. The result was an extremely rigid car, yet a conventional body and frame, easier to work on, less susceptible to rust. Our production prototype weighed only 3200 pounds. Nobody in the industry was within 400 pounds of us.

Ralph bundled Tom McCahill, the colorful Mechanix Illustrated road tester, into a pre-production prototype. They drove out on the Willow Run airport runway—in between planes taking off! That was their “test track” in those days.

Ralph wound the car up to 60 and threw the wheel hard over. It skidded but remained flat and controllable. “I scared the hell out of him,” Ralph laughed. “He nearly jumped out! But I knew what this car could do.” If only they’d made a V-8, to go with that fine handling.

Uncle Tom had a way with words. He wasn’t big on Kaiser’s compact, the Henry J: “It looks like a Cadillac that started smoking too young.”

But he loved the ’51 Kaiser. “It has more creative thinking since Gen. Grant got his last shave.” Of the ’53 Manhattan he wrote, “It rides like a wheelchair upholstered in cream puffs.”

So if and when you see one of those Kaisers on the road, think about Ralph and George and John and Dean and Les and Ben, who together engineered one of the best handling full-size American cars of its day.

K-F’s fabulous styling

Of course the thing that attracts us to these cars is not so much under the skin but their styling, so far ahead of its time. That began, as so many things did, with Dutch Darrin. Without Dutch, they wouldn’t have been the same. But without the team, the cars might never have been as good as they were. The ’51 and its successors were testimony to talent and teamwork. (For the complete design story, see “Kaiser Capers, Part 3.”)

Dutch was a visionary, a romantic, very much his own man, not inclined to tolerate the ideas of others. He was utterly unable hide his light under a bushel. Joe Frazer had hired him to design the first generation cars of 1947-50.

When he heard a redesign was afoot Dutch rushed to Willow Run. There, at a famous review, Henry Kaiser personally chose Dutch’s full-size airbrush rendering, the “Constellation,” over competing designs by his own stylists and Brooks Stevens Associates.

Brooks Stevens, the other outsider, had a distinguished history in industrial design successes, from Miller beer bottles to the civilian Jeeps. Although his basic shape was not chosen, he contributed many detail ideas, including the idea of a “wrap-around bumper” and a combination bumper-grille. (I called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee famous.“)

Duncan McRae, who was Dutch’s assistant then, told me of the famous design review:

The other designers lined up in front of our drawing, hoping Mr. Kaiser wouldn’t see it. Dutch was infuriated. “Watch this,” he said. Then he loosened his belt, got up, called for both Henry and Edgar Kaiser, and as he walked towards them his pants fell to the floor.

After the laughter subsided, he held their complete attention. And of course he did a beautiful selling job. Minutes later, Mr. Kaiser said, “Well, this is it!” Seems incredible by today’s standards, but that’s how cars were shaped in the Fifties.

Devils in the details

Once a design has been accepted, it has to be made into a viable production car. That always involves compromises, and Dutch was no diplomat. So in assigning credit for the ’51 Kaiser, we have to acknowledge all those who followed Dutch and saw it into production.

Alex Tremulis, who had designed the Tucker, headed K-F Advanced Styling, It was he who styled a hardtop prototype which he called the Sun Goddess, “after an Egyptian gal I used to know.” Alex told me about the company’s great in-house designers:

Herb Weissinger, who developed the production shape, was one of the most talented in the profession: a maestro in the execution of a line on a surface. His chrome appliqués were done with the perfection of a Cellini. He never received the plaudits of his profession, but he was one of the greatest.

Arnott “Buzz” Grisinger was the greatest sculptural design modeler I ever met. He did little on paper, usually a quick sketch of a beautiful car floating in space without wheels. This was all he needed to attack a full-size clay model. A master of simplicity, his models were examples of sheer elegance. Engineering draftsmen told me they never had to surface-develop any irregularities. They just took templates off the clay and used the lines verbatim.

Bob Robillard, “Robillardo,” was indispensable when it came to refining and working out endless details for production. Like Buzz he was happiest working alone. I remember Bob sitting in the front seat of a Kaiser sedan for weeks on end, personally modeling the ’54 instrument panel. A real purist, he said that in order properly to design it, one had to live behind it. He was worth ten of his peers.

Team effort

Duncan McRae and Herb Weissinger were mainly responsible for finalizing the ’51 Kaiser. Poor Dutch was eternally frustrated, and eventually left, and the company ungratefully took his name off the cars in 1952.

“I remember coming into the studio one morning after Dutch had walked out,” said Bob Robillard. And there was his beautiful clay model, with a sculpting tool buried to the hilt in the hood. You could have entitled the scene ‘Frustration.’”

We don’t want to under-credit any of these people, because they were a team. And look at what they gave us. The ’51-’55 cars were lower, with more glass, than any Detroit cars on the road—the work of Dutch, Brooks, Herb and Dunc. Grisinger styled the famous 1954 facelift, Bob Robillard did the instrument panels. Carleton Spencer gave us the Kaiser Dragons, and a host of fabrics and colors never seen in cars before. The entire industry benefitted from their work.

In life, nature and nurture do not suffice…

…Success requires they be joined, and their convergence is due to a third ingredient called luck. That is, being in the right place at the right time. Kaiser-Frazer was supremely lucky to have arrived when it did, and to recruit such supremely talented people. One of the most charming things about them, from Joe Frazer down to the lowest engineer on the totem pole, is that they never stopped saying so.

Kaiser-Frazer’s achievement, then, was not just the compulsive application of massive talent, but of a series of events at a unique time. “Luck” means the innumerable things that happen which initially have little to do with talent or striving. In other words, we are fascinated by the K-F phenomenon in part because it is filled with incidents that, were they part of a novel, would cause disbelievers to dismiss them as poetic license.

A story like a novel

Imagine, then, a novel about a fictional company called Kaiser-Frazer. Its story of course must be ten years long—what used to be called a Victorian triple-decker. Indeed, the first melodramatic detail that strikes the reader is just how long it lasted.

It faced truly formidable odds: the combined might of a major industry during the greatest period of economic expansion in American history. Except that it was not a novel. It was the Last Onslaught on Detroit.

Joe Ligo of AutoMoments, who produces highly professional YouTube videos on vintage cars, has published an excellent video on the 1954 Kaiser Special he’s admired since high school. No sooner did I start watching than I heard Joe say his liking for the ’54 Kaiser was bolstered by my book: “My ninth grade self thought it was beautiful…. In person, I still think the design is drop-dead gorgeous.”

Well, I too was in the ninth grade when a ’54 Kaiser (on the street, in 1957!) swept me off my feet. It lit a fire that I only put out twenty years later with my first, and perhaps my best, car book.

Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit (1975, reprinted 1980) was based on dozens of inter­views with company engi­neers, styl­ists and exec­u­tives, and packed with rare pho­tos from pro­to­types to per­son­al­i­ties. In 1975 it won both the Antique Auto­mo­bile Club of Amer­ica McK­ean Tro­phy and the Soci­ety of Auto­mo­tive His­to­ri­ans Cug­not Award. It won, I think, because of the plethora of primary sources. They all were still alive! They had vivid memories, strong opinions, and scores of inside stories.

It was my pleasure to speak on the writing of that book at the Kaiser-Frazer Owners Club 2015 National Meet in Gettysburg. Here is the transcript, inspired by Joe and AutoMoments. By the way, Joe also offers a thoughtful video commentary on the 1954 Kaiser brochure.

Kaiser-Frazer, Part 1: “The Venture”

Gettysburg, 30 July 2015— I am grateful for your invitation, but to tell you the truth I have stumbled over what I might say to you. It’s forty years since Last Onslaught on Detroit was published. The body of historical knowledge about what Edgar F. Kaiser always called “The Venture” has increased considerably. Here in 2015, I am inclined to think that I may well have the least claim of anyone to address the subject with any authority at all. Were it not for the feeling of being among friends, I might turn tail and run. The obvious thing to talk about is the book, how it came to be written, and what we learned that didn’t get into print.

Last Onslaught [Up Until Then] on Detroit was never planned, never outlined in advance. Indeed were it not for two people who are here tonight, and a third who cannot be, it never would have dawned on me that there was a story beyond just another Michigan car company. And the scores of people who wrote that story would not have been heard from.

Artie and the Dragon

Artie Sedmont owned the 1953 Kaiser Dragon that caught my eye in a scruffy filling station near Freehold, New Jersey. I was commuting between Philadelphia, where I was stationed with the Coast Guard, and Staten Island, where my future wife lived. I knew that K-F had built interesting cars. Actually I’d already written an essay about them for my high school English class. Imagine the shock of my teacher, Mr. Quinn, when he received an inscribed copy of Last Onslaught nearly two decades later!

Artie sold me the Dragon. It was odd car, as I learned after joining the Kaiser-Frazer club in 1966. It ran rough and had rust, but the interior was fabulous—Kaiser’s green “bambu vinyl” with green bouclé vinyl inserts. There was a green and white option, but nobody I asked had ever seen all-green before. (Another example has since surfaced.)

Even more oddly, its serial number was for a low-line Kaiser Deluxe: K531-007372. It also bore a small firewall plaque that meant nothing to me at the time, labeled “SPEC-FO” with a four-digit number preceded by a “K.”

We thought we could fix it up, but it threw a rod on the New Jersey Turnpike. Couldn’t afford a rebuilt engine, but for only $250, a friend offered a nice ‘54 Kaiser Manhattan. I repainted it and installed the Dragon’s special interior. I offered the Dragon’s remains free to anyone who would take it away, and a fellow did.  Five years later I learned I had committed sacrilege.

Junking a one-off

In Detroit I was interviewing Carleton Spencer, the great fabric and color specialist who created most of the fine Kaiser-Frazer interiors and paints, from the first Frazer Manhattan to the last ’55s. I described the oddball Dragon to Carl. “I know that car!” he said:

We had finished the Dragon run when a late order came in. A customer wanted one like the car in the brochure—ivory with a green top. But he wanted all-green vinyl seats—a combination we didn’t offer. Well, of course we fixed him up. In 1953 we’d build anything you wanted. We pulled a Deluxe out of the body bank and built it to order. The SPEC-FO plaque stood for ‘Special Factory Order.’ You junked a one-of-a-kind automobile!

A Dragon flyer was the first thing I received when as a boy I wrote to K-F in Willow Run, Michigan, asking for sales brochures. Years later Carl Spencer signed it, as you see, but there’s always more to a story. Look down at the bottom and you’ll see the printed signature “Paul Rand.” It’s on a number of Kaiser-Frazer brochures.

Paul Rand, born Peretz Rosenbaum (1914-1996), was a prominent graphic designer. He created logos we see every day: UPS, IBM, ABC, Westinghouse. His work is world famous. He taught design at Yale, and in 1974 was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. As usual, when shopping for talent, Henry Kaiser’s and Joe Frazer’s tastes were very simple: they were quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.

Bill Tilden

The second key person in the book’s story was Bill Tilden, whom we sadly lost in 2013.  One spring evening I was the duty officer at the Coast Guard base when the phone rang: “Sir, there’s a civilian here asking for you. He’s driving the weirdest car I’ve ever seen.”

It was Bill, of course. We clicked from the start. Within a week he hied me off to north Philadelphia, to help strip the attractive, mock lizard skin upholstery out of a rusty old Kaiser. Another bad mistake! We’d junked an ultra-rare 1951 Emerald Dragon. If they built a dozen of those, it was a lot. That made three Kaisers I’d either foolishly scrapped or modified out of recognition. Those three were the last!

After the Coast Guard I drove my ’54 Manhattan with its Dragon seats to Pennsylvania and went to work for the State Health Department in Harrisburg. I eventually sold it to a man from Illinois named Al Mobeck. I don’t know if it survived. Maybe someone knows? It was painted solid Palm Beach Ivory. Its green interior was spectacular.

Bill Miller

I thought then that I was done with Kaiser-Frazer, but suddenly, blocks away from my apartment, I saw this beautiful maroon ‘53 Henry J parked in somebody’s driveway. Meet the third player in the drama: Bill Miller, who became co-founder of Carlisle Events and the famous Carlisle swap meets and auctions.

Bill was a salesman at a local Chevy dealer, so he had a coat and tie. He would show up at my office at the Health Department, introduced as Dr. Miller. I would say we had an urgent appointment. Together we’d toddle off, change clothes, and spend the day junkyarding. We found all sorts of stuff, including a rare ’49 Kaiser Virginian with a canvas roof on top of a hill near Reading. It didn’t run and had no brakes. The junky, Mr. Kettner, in between four-letter words, coasted it down using reverse gear as a braking device. We towed it home, and Bill “tried” to restore it. I do hope he flipped it!

Bill helped get me into my next Kaiser, a 1953 Deluxe painted Cerulean blue. This is a color like the bottom of a swimming pool. It had a sweet manual shift and drove like a song.

When I needed parts he floored me by saying, “You can get anything you need at a Kaiser dealer I know.” What? This was 1968, remember—14 years after the last Kaisers left Toledo.

A Surviving dealer with a brand new Kaiser

Bill introduced me to Frank R. Bobb of Mt. Holly Springs, Pennsylvania. Bobb’s Garage was a ramshackle brick manse which hadn’t been cleaned in a decade, guarded by a hound anchored near Frank’s cuspidor with a chain that could have held the Queen Mary. We walked in and Bill said: “Mr. Bobb, I brought a friend to see your brand new Kaiser.”

With a well-aimed pitooy past the ear of the dozing mutt, Frank led us “out back.” There we beheld a pearl grey ‘53 Manhattan with 3500 miles on the odometer. It was so new the upholstery still squeaked when you sat in it.

That car is still around and maybe some of you have seen it. The paint job was custom. It was presented to Frank for selling the most Kaiser-Frazer cars in his sales area—which in rural Pennsylvania couldn’t have been easy.

More astonishing was Frank’s parts department. He had stuff you wouldn’t believe. How about a 1951 Frazer grille medallion, brand new in the box? Or a chrome and black plastic ’52 Virginian hood ornament? Or block “K” emblems for the ’53 hood or deck? When it came to price, there was no haggling. Frank would look it up in his official price list and charge you full 1953 dealer retail. I think those Frazer medallions cost us all of $3.73 each.

Historical discovery

Mr. Bobb had something else: a complete set of dealer correspondence, sales, service and confidential bulletins, from the time he bought the franchise shortly after the war to the end—which he gave or sold me. Suddenly I was thumbing through hundreds of documents that, sequentially, gave a complete picture, from a dealer’s standpoint, of the rise and fall of Kaiser-Frazer and its successor, Kaiser-Willys.

This stirred my historical instincts. By then I was editor of the Kaiser-Frazer club quarterly, which had arrived on my doorstep unsolicited, from dear Tom Wilson in Michigan, the previous editor, who just got tired of it. The club told me to go ahead and produce something, so I did. It was embarrassingly amateurish, but everybody was very kind.

Fired up, I wrote to our chief honorary member, Joseph W. Frazer, and asked for an interview. What the heck, right? He floored me when he said sure—come out and see him at “High Tide,” his French-style chateau on the coast in Newport, Rhode Island. Unique among Detroit auto executives, he had commuted weekly to and from Newport. Years later, I named our house in the Bahamas “High Tide” in Joe’s memory.

Off we went, Bill Tilden and me, to record for the club magazine the first words Frazer had said publicly about Kaiser-Frazer since he left the board of directors in 1953. We published the transcript in the summer 1969 issue, as I remember. I don’t have it. All my print archives were destroyed in a fire that burned my antique barns in 2003.

Joe Frazer and Hickman Price

Mr. Frazer’s nephew, Hickman Price, was present for the interview. Joe was widowed now, living in a small wing of this beautiful house. Hickman was redecorating the rest. Bill and I gathered that he was the old man’s watchful protector. We drank Tennessee bourbon and branch water, and they both loosened up.

Mr. Frazer was very careful not to criticize anybody, but it was clear that he’d been heartbroken over the failure of the company. The two things he was most proud of said a lot about him. The first was that at peak, they had 20,000 people working. The second was that 100,000 cars bore his name. He also said something about the auto industry I will never forget: “There’s so much money going out the window every day in this business, that if you’re not careful you’ll lose your shirt.” That, of course, is exactly what happened to Kaiser-Frazer.

As we left, Hickman Price made me an offer: “If you ever decide to write a book, come back and see me. I will tell you a thing or two about that benighted company nobody else will.” He proved to be as good as his word.

“You’re going to pay me to write about cars?!”

Possessed now of just enough knowledge to be cocky, I wrote an article about Kaiser-Frazer and sent it unsolicited to Automobile Quarterly in New York City. Not only did they buy it; they asked if I’d like to come to work as associate editor. I said I’d grown up in New York and had vowed never to return, I was a country boy. “But wait—did you say you’re going to pay me to write about cars?” The decision was inevitable.

What luck! Automobile Quarterly then, 1970-75, was in its golden age. Its editors were twin geniuses, Don Vorderman and Beverly Rae Kimes. They taught me things I would always remember and use to my benefit. Don reminded me about brevity: “A bore is somebody who tells everything.” Beverly’s advice was more personal, and important: “Never fail at anything.”

Automobile Quarterly had great art directors and a range of writers, artists and photographers. From Ken Purdy to Karl Ludvigsen, Peter Helck to Walter Gotschke they were the best in the game. They actually paid me to hang around and learn from these people.

I was hired to edit a series of books, the first of which was The American Car Since 1775. The last was the multi-author Packard: A History of the Motorcar and the Company. Along the way I asked shyly if I might write a book about Kaiser–Frazer.

“It won’t sell,” the boss said. “But go ahead. Take as long as you like.” We were all astonished when it sold 20,000 copies in two printings.

Part 2: The Making of an Award Winning Book…

Part 3

Excerpt: For the complete article and illustrations, refer to The Automobile, May 2017. 

Postwar Kaiser and Frazer

Dutch had an earthy vocabulary, and his methods of work were forthright with a touch of recklessness. He needed these qualities when, after the war, he presented himself to his old friend Joe Frazer, father of the wartime Jeep, to offer designs for the all-new cars Frazer was planning, in partnership with Henry J. Kaiser.

His basic lines were accepted, but modified on the way to production. Dutch furiously quit, saying the engineers “bent the goddam thing all out of shape,” and demanding his name, which K-F had agreed to put on every production car, be removed. Nevertheless, those early Frazers and Kaisers, different in many ways, offered the first straight-through fender line in a production automobile.

Dutch’s Seminal ’51 Kaiser

In 1948 they needed a new design, and Dutch returned to introduce “Speed-Styling,” on what he called the “Constellation.” A fresh approach in automotive architecture, its ultra-low aspect was achieved by new departures —a spare tire mounted under the trunk floor, curved doors extending into the roof, a chassis contour allowing a much lower rear seat, unprecedented glass area.

At Kaiser-Frazer, designers Duncan McRae and Herb Weissinger sculpted the final lines. Bob Robillard, E.H. Daniels and Buzz Grisinger contributed design details, Carleton Spencer some vivid interiors. Chief engineer Ralph Isbrandt, under Engineering chief H.V. Lindbergh, gave it fine handling and a smooth ride.

Unfortunately, those beautiful cars were powered by sixes not V-8s, and sales suffered as time went on through their lack of performance. The shape, however, endured. A handsome facelift carried it into 1955—and then from 1958 through 1962, when Kaiser car production moved to Argentina. That was quite a long life for any car design in the Fifties and Sixties.

Kaiser-Darrin sports car

When left to himself, Dutch was capable of producing sensational shapes, but they weren’t always entirely practical. Perhaps today, with modern materials and servo-assists, the Kaiser-Darrin’s famous sliding doors would work better. Even then, the shape wasn’t right. They didn’t fit people with long legs, and folk of all sizes found it difficult to exit and enter.

The Kaiser Darrin DKF-161, to use its formal name, was nevertheless a dramatic piece of styling. Compared to the first Corvette, which appeared around the same time, it was sleeker, cleaner, uncluttered.

Like the Corvette its body was fiberglass, and like the first Corvette it was underpowered, by a little Willys F-head six. But as a design statement it was sensational. Sadly, by the time they got into production, the company was headed for oblivion. Only 435 Kaiser Darrins were built. The vast majority have survived.

To Henry Kaiser’s credit, he did insist on including “Darrin” in the sports car’s name—as he had granted the use of a little plaque, reading “Darrin Styled,” on the early 1947-48 cars and 1951 Kaiser. Designer Raymond Loewy’s name never appeared on his automobiles, Dutch bragged.  “He asked me how I was able to do it. Actually it was thanks to a very generous contract Joe Frazer had written for me early on.”

Last thoughts

Early after the war, Darrin designed an all-new body for the homely Crosley, but Powell Crosley never wanted to spend the money. Finally he was involved in designing what became the Jeep Wagoneer—a big success for Jeep Corporation, which made up nicely for the sad failure of Kaiser-Frazer.

Pushing seventy, he wandered into Automobile Quarterly one day and began to reminisce. Gradually the light dawned. “Are you by any chance Howard Darrin?” editor Don Vorderman asked. Yes, it was he. “Wait, let me fetch a tape recorder!”

Don began reciting what he thought he knew about who created which great cars, and Dutch would sometimes take adamant exception. He never hid his light under a bushel, and if writers altered his version of automotive history, he was happy to lend them a piece of his mind.

“We Happy Few”

In the Seventies I had the opportunity to work closely with Darrin over my first book, on that same postwar company where Dutch had had so many triumphs and disappointments. It was sometimes exasperating; it was never dull. He had very firm ideas about automotive architecture and his role in it. On these he sailed confidently forward, and once arrived in his port of conclusion, no attack was sufficient to dislodge him.

Dutch was a man of striking contrasts—funny and serious, reckless and capable, diplomatic and headstrong, inspired, complex, vastly talented. If there was one quality which set him off from others in his trade, it was his characteristic way of standing back and looking at himself as he hoped history would. “How will I look if I do this?” he seemed to ask himself. He was always looking around for finest hours, and if one was not immediately available, his impulse was to create one. In the process, he gave us some of the most beautiful cars in the world.

Above all, of course, Dutch was supremely fortunate. The most warming thing about him was that he never ceased to say so. “Whomever thought that a dumb kid like me would fall into the strawberry patch?” he said. “I can describe my life in one word—happy. I’ve spent it doing the three things I most enjoy: building cars, flying airplanes and playing polo. Combine that with being married to a terrific woman—and what more can any man ask?”

We happy few who knew him all remember some incident, a kindness graced with the courtesy of a past generation, going far beyond the normal calls of acquaintanceship. In the midst of all the tributes paid to him, I know the epitaph Dutch would have chosen for himself: “He was a good automobile man.”

More Darrin

Part 1: “All the Luck: Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017.

“Part 2: The Packard Adventures of Dutch Darrin,” 2017.

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” 2019.

“Kaiser-Frazer, Part 2,” 2019.

“Don Vorderman: The Best Editor I Ever Had,” 2019.

Remembrance of Bill Tilden written for the Society of Automotive Historians Journal

U.S. Coast Guard Base, Gloucester City, New Jersey, July 1965: A call from the Ops office—“Sir, there’s a civilian here asking for you. He’s driving the weirdest car I’ve ever seen.”

It was Bill, of course. We clicked from the start. Within a week he hied me off to north Philadelphia to help strip the oddly attractive, faux lizard skin upholstery out of a rusty old car. It turned out a bad mistake—we’d junked an ultra-rare 1951 Kaiser Emerald Dragon. They built maybe six….

He loved ’em all

Bill’s automotive tastes were catholic, ranging from the E-type Jaguar he bought new and raced—probably the oldest in the hands of its original owner—to a 1941 Cadillac Sixty-Special, several Continentals and late-model Mopars, which he acquired as “future collectibles” from Chrysler, where he then worked, building dealerships. It was Detroit’s heyday, Chrysler was rich and powerful, and more often than they knew, they helped finance our travels in search of relics.

Bill’s wife Marilyn was resigned to his addiction, though she never forgave him for the clapped-out 1949 Frazer convertible with which Bill decorated their home in Dunwoody, Georgia. “Have you seen that Gahongas?” she said on my first visit. “So help me, if he doesn’t get rid of that thing I’m going to leave it out on the street for the garbage truck.”

The Frazer was restored, which eased her opinion, especially when he sold it. But that was Bill, who had a soft spot for derelicts, orphans especially. He was down to under fifty (“I’m only keeping the cream”) when he was taken from us.

In search of history

Our greatest collaboration was on my first book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught [until then] on Detroit, which was a good job because of Bill. As historians, we were just in time. Many of the K-F principals were aging or infirm. The book made good its claim (“an intimate study of the American car industry”) because Bill helped find many of them: Henry McCaslin, chief engineer of the front-wheel-drive Kaiser; Ralph Isbrandt, who gave the revolutionary ’51 its remarkable handling; designers Buzz Grisinger, Alex Tremulis and Bob Robillard, who had, with others, taken Kaiser-Frazer styling so far above the mainstream. The book sold 7500 copies in two printings. Bill sold several hundred himself!

Time is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it. Cruising the Packard Proving Grounds at 140 in Bill’s E-type. (Ka-pow! went one of his Atlas Bucrons. We stopped to find a fist-sized hole in the tread.). Same venue in his retrofitted stick-overdrive Packard Caribbean, but only 110! Touring the bars and dives of the Florida panhandle, in search of some old automotive duffer. Entertaining Austin Clark at the Dearborn Inn. Bill driving Brooks Stevens’ Excaliburs at Indy. Meandering Hershey looking for Nash dealer signs….

And that’s all you have when a friend dies. Just memories. It’s not enough, really, but it’s all you get, and soon we’re gone too, and the memories with us. He meant so much to so many, that this can only be a symbolic tribute for us all. But I have no hesitation or lack of breath in this valedictory fanfare. You were always on the good side. You loved the cars, and the people who built them; you were all that was good in our world. Fare thee well, my gifted, true and many-sided friend.

Seeing an opportunity to run his own company, Frazer took control of moribund Graham-Paige in 1944, and two years later merged its automotive interests with a new corporation he and Henry Kaiser had formed, leasing and then buying the gigantic ex-bomber factory at Willow Run, Michigan. During Frazer’s 1946-48 presidency, Kaiser-Frazer was the fourth largest car producer in the world, and ranked eighth in production by make, ahead of all other independents. He stepped down as an active officer in 1949. The company never again recorded a profit.

By the 1950s Joe retired to his beloved Newport, from where he had commuted back and forth to Detroit much of his working life. One of the things he was proudest of, when I knew him in the late Sixties and early Seventies, was being the only living man at that time with over 100,000 cars bearing his name.

A few of us were fortunate enough to visit him in his last years, I mainly to prepare my first book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit. But of all the companies he worked for, he spoke most warmly of Packard. “It was catastrophic,” he said, “that this grand old company went down the drain the way it did. It shouldn’t have happened—didn’t have to happen. The loss of Packard was one of the great tragedies of the industry.”

Joe Frazer had another characteristic probably associated with his aristocratic Southern upbringing: he was a gentleman. He never spoke ill of anyone, even those who had disappointed him badly. His grasp of history, his continued interest in and perception of the industry even at advanced age, his humor and wit, and most of all his kindness us car nuts, to whom he opened his doors as fellow lovers of the automobile, made him, in our eyes, a beloved figure.

There’s an old song about the “Giants of Old.” How fortunate the auto industry was to have had men like this in its glory days. Joe’s memory lives on with those who knew him, but his favorite aphorism will serve for all those who did not: “Security is but an illusion; repose is not the destiny of man.”

Concluded in Part 3…

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In April 2012, Joseph Washington Frazer (1892-1971) will be inducted, belatedly, into the Automotive Hall of Fame, with his erstwhile partner, Henry J. Kaiser, co-founders of the world’s fourth-largest auto manufacturer during 1946-48. This article is updated from the obituaries I wrote for JWF on his death in 1971. For more on Frazer, see my book, Kaiser-Frazer: Last Onslaught on Detroit.