1951 Frazer Manhattan

1951 Frazer Manhattan.

Frazer was one of the few genuinely new post World War II American cars, but managed only a short, somewhat unhappy life. The name honored Joseph Washington Frazer, the high-born aristocrat (descended from the Virginia Washingtons) who loved motorcars and became a super-salesman through stints at Packard, Pierce-Arrow, and General Motors. Frazer also worked with Walter P. Chrysler in the 1920s and resuscitated moribund Willys-Overland in the late '30s.

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. Kaiser and Frazer would continue to share bodies and engines through 1950 with different exterior and interior trim.

Henry Kaiser had no automotive marketing experience while Joseph Frazer did, having been president of the Graham-Paige Corporation prior to the Second World War. 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 with the introduction of new designs from the Big Three, 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 Frazer nameplate was dropped after a short 10,000 unit production run. In 1952 the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation was renamed Kaiser Motors Corporation and continued building passenger cars until 1955.