Kaiser

1953 Kaiser Dragon. (Photo by David Conwill.)

“What do I blog this time?” I asked myself.
Another issue of Classic Car magazine appeared, May 2017, and had a lot of interesting cars.
A ’55 Chevy pickup, wood-bodied Plymouth stationwagons, a Kaiser, an unrestored ’62 Fairlane, and a ’55 Dodge with its original owner.
Maybe the Plymouth wagons, since the first out-of-the-ordinary car I was ever in was a 1950 Plymouth Suburban.
But “Subs” were all-metal; the featured wagons were wood-bodied.
Lots of text was dedicated to the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York City. It didn’t have the imprimatur of the Bureau of International Expositions (????), so lacked participation of some international entities.
But good old American industry, especially the auto industry, filled the gaps. It had gigantic displays.
Of interest to car-guys was introduction of Ford’s Mustang. Magazine staff waxed eloquent about the Mustang, but being slightly older what did it for me was Chevrolet’s new high-revving V8 of 1955, what later became known as the SmallBlock.
If GM had been savvy, they would have seen the Mustang market coming: millions of baby-boomers coming of age, and Corvair’s Monza sporty-car variants selling like hotcakes.
The Mustang is extremely important, but I think I’ll blog that Kaiser.
Kaiser was an attempt to break into the American car-market after Henry Kaiser had so much so much success building ships for WWII. He also founded Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel.
When we lived in Erlton (NJ), growing up as a child, a neighbor across the street bought Kaisers. He had one the same model and color as the one pictured (although perhaps not a “Dragon”).
It’s a ’53; compare the looks of it to a ’53 Chevy.
The front is clearly 1953; a bit bloated. Otherwise it’s a great-looking styling job.
The later Kaisers were styled by Dutch Darrin; a breakaway from earlier slab-sided Kaisers.
(About all that’s wrong is that dip in the windshield-top.)
Gorgeous or not they lacked one major thing — what ruined Kaiser Motors. They lacked a modern overhead-valve V8 engine as being introduced by the Big Three.
Cadillac and Oldsmobile introduced modern overhead-valve V8 engines for the 1949 model-year — Buick in 1953.
Ford brought out its Y-block in 1954; Chevy its SmallBlock in 1955.
Kaiser was building modern cars right after WWII, compared to rehashed 1942 models from the Big Three.
But Kaiser could never afford developing a modern overhead-valve V8. They were forced to continue using the ancient Continental flat-head six-in-line.
The other impossible engineering challenge was automatic transmission. Kaiser used GM’s Hydramatic; that is, not developed in-house.
Continental engines are also not in-house. Kaiser Motors could never afford that. Continental engines are from an outside supplier = Continental Motors. Many independent American automobile manufacturers once did that = motors from outside suppliers.

Disregard medallion, not a V-motor. (Photo by David Conwill.)

Which makes me question that V-shaped medallion on the front of the car.
Would that Buick or Olds, or even Caddy, looked as good as this car.
Kaiser was supposed to compete with the B-O-P cars from GM. But they had available V8s, whereas Kaiser didn’t.
So goes another challenger to the Big Three. Along with Studebaker, Nash/Rambler, and Hudson.
It took the invaders of Pearl Harbor to break the dominance of the Big Three.
The “Dragon” was Kaiser’s premier model. It had a special top overlay that mimicked reptilian skin.

• “Erlton” (‘EARL-tin’) is the small suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey where I lived until I was 13. Erlton was founded in the ‘30s, named after its developer, whose name was Earl. Erlton was north of Haddonfield (“ha-din-feeld;” as in “hah”), an old Revolutionary town.