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 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.
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 1970, the Kaiser Jeep Corporation, as the company had been renamed in 1963, was sold to American Motors Corporation which continued to manufacture Jeep vehicles until AMC itself 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.
Production of Kaiser-Frazer models was centered at Willow Run, Michigan. Willow Run, the largest building in the world at that time, was built by the U.S. government just prior to World War II for Henry Ford to build B-24 Liberator bombers. Once the war ended, Ford had no interest in the facility, setting the War Assets Administration off in a search for someone to lease or buy the building. When K-F expressed interest in the facility, the WAA offered them an attractive five-year lease rate. K-F also had manufacturing facilities in Jefferson MI, Long Beach CA, Portland OR, Leaside, Ontario, Canada, Haifa, Israel, Kawasaki, Japan, Mexico City, and Rotterdam (known as "Nekaf" Nederlandse Kaiser-Frazer fabrieken). U.S. production was concentrated at Toledo, OH upon the purchase of Willys-Overland starting in 1953; the Willow Run facility had been sold to General Motors after GM suffered a disastrous fire at their Livonia, MI Hydramatic automatic transmission plant and needed a facility quickly to resume production.
(WIKIPEDIA.COM)
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