You might think that the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette was the first fiberglass-bodied, two-seat sports car from an American automaker — but you’d be wrong.
In 1952, two months before the premiere of the Chevrolet Corvette, the Kaiser Darrin debuts at the Los Angeles Motorama. Unlike the Corvette, however, it would take until 1954 to reach showrooms, by which point the Corvette — with a far stronger dealer network — was struggling to find buyers. Kaiser didn’t have a chance.
The Kaiser Darrin lasted one model year, but it remains a fascinating design, one executed by one of America’s most respected car designers for a company in the midst of transformation.
An upstart automaker
Having revolutionized shipbuilding during World War II, Henry J. Kaiser decided to enter the car business, partnering with Graham-Paige Motors, whose CEO, Joseph W. Frazer, became president of the newly formed Kaiser-Frazer.
Looking to revolutionize automobiles, Kaiser displayed a front-wheel-drive concept in 1946 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. What ultimately emerged was far more pedestrian; a rear-wheel-drive sedan powered by a 6-cylinder engine. The company sold two brands: high-end Frazers and mainstream Kaisers.
When the first models arrived the following year, sales proved brisk as anything new with wheels sold; new cars hadn’t been produced from February 1942 through August 1945. And the man who had its design? Howard “Dutch” Darrin.
An American in Paris
Born in 1897 in Cranford, New Jersey, Darrin became an American flier during World War I. He would go on to partner with Thomas Hibbard in Paris, initially to sell Belgium-built Minerva automobiles before establishing their design consultancy Hibbard & Darrin in 1923.
Hibbard would eventually depart to join General Motors’ Art & Colour department under Harley Earl, leaving Darrin to form a new venture in Paris with financier J. Fernandez, and named Fernandez & Darrin. Like his former partnership, the company designed custom coachwork for luxury automakers, a common practice at the time. His time in Paris saw him associated with the European auto industry’s leading lights: André Citröen, Louis Renault, the brothers Panhard, Ettore Bugatti and many others.
Upon the company’s closing in 1937, Darrin returned to America, settling in Hollywood where he opened Darrin of Paris, designing custom coachbuilt cars for Hollywood stars such as Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Ann Sheridan and Carole Lombard. He also designed the Packard Darrin, a special model originally built as a custom for actor Dick Powell. It created such a stir, it became a production model, built on the Super Eight chassis.
But after the war, with coachbuilding dying, Darrin was hired by Henry Kaiser as a freelance consultant to style his new sedan for 1946. It proved to be a good gig, as Kaiser-Frazer’s initial sales were strong.
A new gig
But trouble arose in 1949 as Kaiser increased production to 200,000 units, but sold 58,000. Frazer, knowing new designs were coming from the Big Three, wanted to scale back but Kaiser didn’t listen. Twenty percent of production remained unsold and were reserialized as 1950 models. A planned redesign by Darrin was pushed off. Frazer left the company; Henry’s son Edgar replaced him as president.
The company tried to maintain buyer interest by introducing the first hatchbacks, the Kaiser Traveler and Vagabond. It then offered a compact car, modestly named the Henry J. It too failed. Even Darrin’s 1951 redesign failed to stem Kaiser-Frazer’s sinking sales.
Yet Darrin’s relationship with Kaiser had always been stormy, and the designer quit multiple times, only to return. But in 1951, Darrin insisted he was through was Kaiser.
Happy wife, sales strife
Despite no longer being affiliated with the automaker, he couldn’t get the Henry J out of his head. He went to work designing a two-seat sports car using the Henry J chassis, financing the project himself.
Built of fiberglass by upstart company Glasspar, its doors slid forward into the front fender. Its beltline featured the classic “Darrin Dip,” a design detail also used on the Packard Darrin. The dipping beltline flowed forward towards the front grille, which looked as if the car was puckering for a kiss.
Unaware of the car’s existence, Darrin showed the car to Henry Kaiser. Henry was unimpressed, but his wife thought it was the most beautiful car she ever saw. It went into production even though the company’s fortunes were faltering. Sales slid to 32,000 units in 1952 and 28,000 in 1953. So, many wondered why Kaiser decided to buy Willys-Overland for $63 million, which was faring just as badly.
Nevertheless, it would take until 1954 for the Kaiser Darrin to reach showrooms, and when it did, it was priced from $3,668, more than a Cadillac Series 62. Unlike the Cadillac, however, power came from a 90-horsepower Willys F-Head engine mated to a 3-speed manual transmission. Overdrive was optional, as was an automatic transmission. Other options included power brakes, power steering, air conditioning, whitewall tires, wire wheels, tinted glass, a heater and seat belts.
But it wasn’t as fast as it looked; reaching 60 mph required 15 seconds. Kaiser produced 435 before production stops, with Darrin buying the last 50 and selling them himself.
Sales of Kaiser cars no longer mattered by 1954, however, as the company was already shifting gears by the time it went on sale.
Kaiser’s next chapter
As Ford launched a price war with General Motors and Chrysler in 1953, all independent automakers saw their sales decline. This caused consumers to fear that buying one risked being stuck with an orphan once the company shut its doors, leading to further sales shortfalls.
Given these circumstances, Kaiser’s purchase of Willys Overland seems puzzling.
But the reality is that the company’s Jeep line had one domestic competitor, International Harvester, not six. And Jeep had a thriving international licensing business that included India’s Mahindra and Japan’s Mitsubishi among its customers.
Once Kaiser acquired the automaker, it was renamed Willys Motors, and Kaiser’s production was consolidated at Willys Toledo plant, with Kaiser selling its Willow Run (Michigan) facility to General Motors in 1954 for $24 million. Many Kaiser dealers had become Jeep dealers by the time the Kaiser Darrin reached showrooms.
Tooling for the 1954 Kaiser was saved, and moved to Industrias Kaiser Argentina as Kaiser’s car line went out of production in the United States. The car would continue to be built in Argentina as the Kaiser Carabela from 1958 through 1962.
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’s death in 1969.
Many view Henry Kaiser’s 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 his first eight, meriting a re-examination of his skill as an auto executive.
Darrin would continue designing, although his design proposals remained just that. Named one of the Twentieth Century’s top 15 industrial designers by Syracuse University in 1965, he died in 1992. But the Kaiser Darrin proved inspirational to budding actor James William Ercolani, aka James Darren, who used the car’s surname for his own screen name.
“It was a car designed by a man named Dutch Darrin,” James Darren said. “I just changed the ‘I’ to an ‘E’.”
Today, a concours-quality Kaiser Darrin is worth $224,000 according to the Hagerty Price Guide, with #3 drivers fetching half of that.