Great Cars: KAISER

Henry J Kaiser was called America's boldest most spectacular entrepreneur he launched chips during World War two manufactured steel built the great dams of the West developed a healthcare organization that became the model for all HMOs and mounted the last real challenge to Detroit's Big Three automakers it was a challenge that's largely forgotten today [Music] Henry Kaiser said to think big when he wanted to start a car company he was determined to tackle the big three known as hurry up Henry he set out to beat Detroit's established car makers to market with a new car right after World War two no challenge was too big and no one could tell him that there wasn't enough time he always found a way in the summer of 2004 the kaiser fraser owners club met for its 46th annual convention in northern Indiana to remember the men who rushed to create the cars they loved this is an excellent turnout it's the Kaiser Fraser owners club internacional National Convention yearly convention we have a hundred and eighteen cars here which may not be a lot by Chevy or Ford standards but for us it's near record turnout for a national convention right after World War two it seemed as though Kaiser would beat the Big Three automakers eventually he failed but he produced cars that left a mark on the automotive landscape [Music] so each car has its its attributes and it's kind of nice it's kind of like picking a favorite kind of candy it's a little hard too hard too hard to do the public has largely forgotten these cars and the man who created them Henry Kaiser he was always influenced by his surroundings starting when he was born in upstate New York in 1882 he was from a little town called Canajoharie New York which is on the Erie Canal and I think that probably had a real effect on him because the Erie Canal changed a whole part of America it's like a public works project that just transformed a part of America so you could conceive of what happened when you had this giant public works project at all it really could make a real difference Kaiser's ambitions flowed like the canal and he began a quest to find his life's calling his future father-in-law told him to move west build a home and save $1,000 if he wanted to marry the girl of his dreams he headed for Spokane Washington in 1906 and found a job working for a company that supplied hardware to contractors and he learned the contracting business by dealing with contractors by going to the library and reading and then he opened up his own business right at the time that cars were coming along and demanding owners were starting to form clubs and demanding good roads trucking companies were demanding good Road what business did he go into road paving the growing country had an insatiable appetite for new roads and Keiser found a way to help he started to earn a reputation for being able to get big things done well he built thousands of miles of roads he built bridges but it was all part of this was a time when the country needed transportation and he was right there in the industry to make the money the economy collapsed after the stock market crashed in 1929 President Roosevelt turned to public works projects to lift the country out of a deep depression this put Kaiser at the interchange of the forces that would reshape the American West he produced the dams he was the contractor on Grand Coulee and on the Hoover Boulder down there basic to the to the development of the West you talk about the industrialization of the West well you couldn't have that without the infrastructure things like the dams daddy was innovative too and we we lost the bid for Shasta Dam after vote her and Henry says well let's do something else we build a cement plant business it's a place of myth with all the aggravating of Chester dam although we we didn't build it we sold all the material that's how innovative he was that's how permanently cement came came about [Music] the joy of economic recovery were soon dashed by the onset at war before the United States entered the war Britain stood alone trying to defend against an unrelenting German aerial onslaught German submarines were sinking the ships that tried to send aid they needed help Great Britain came over here with an order for 60 ships they wanted built that's a huge order and they couldn't build them in Great Britain because they were already at war their shipyards were being bombed they were running flat out anyway so they came to the United States looking for somebody to build ships for and of course the United States knew that war was coming too so these shipyards are all busy Kaiser comes up and says I can build ships for you Kaiser didn't have any shipyards he'd never built a ship but he knew how to build things and he knew how to organize people and materials he won the contract from the British to build 30 ships well he didn't have a shipyard he had some marshland on the San Francisco Bay in Richmond California near Oakland he literally built the shipyard from the ground up digging out a quart and filling in where necessary the shipyards attracted people from all over the country men and women of all races banded together to do their part for the war effort Richmond quickly grew from 12,000 to over a hundred and twenty thousand if he built a shipyard there and they built more ships faster than anybody in histories he figured that there was a better way to build ships and build a one plate at a time and prefabrication was the reason we built so many ships prefabrication allowed more and more people to work on one ship at a time [Music] they were building ships in 45 days at a time when it normally took nine months to a year to build one the street things up even more Kaiser launched the competition 30 days 25 days 15 days 10 days the winner four and a half days this was phenomenal it allowed him to build over 1400 ships Kaiser didn't know the word count Kaiser was building ships faster than German submarines could sink them he was turning out planes ship engines and munitions as well as building airfields and military facilities he had the equivalent of 20 military divisions 300 thousand workers employed in war production [Music] he was an industrial general on the homefront who was optimism inventiveness and ability to inspire his employees helped to win the war finally in August of 1945 World War two ended several years later Gerard Field founder publisher and editor of Scientific American reflected on the Kaiser contribution to the war effort on the day after the Battle of the Philippines when the Japanese Navy had been sunk or driven from the seat Henry Kaiser and Admiral Vickery and I as a fly-on-the-wall had lunch together at the Mayflower and when the first martinis were put on the table Admiral Vickery raised his and with a tear rolling from his eye he said Henry Kaiser and there's one of our fellow citizens to whom we owe this day it is to you sir perhaps the most enduring legacy that came out of his ability to solve large problems is the Kaiser Permanente medical care program it grew rapidly during the war as Kaiser sought ways to provide the best medical care for his ever-growing workforce Kaiser called on dr. Sidney Garfield to undertake the immense task of recruiting and training doctors and setting up medical facilities to serve the thousands of workers of the shipyards the effort caught the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt and others who saw it as a model for the nation it was based on the idea of prepayment preventive medical care group practice integrated medical facilities voluntary enrollment and affordability but not all of his ideas were good Caixa devised a system for the hospital's maternity wards called baby in a drawer that never caught on he thought that instead of relying on nurses it would be more efficient to have babies sent to their mothers via a centralized conveyor system but the doctors and patients liked the rest of his healthcare system and it thrived [Music] after the war some of the physicians were really excited by the idea of this prepayment because instead of waiting until people got sick in order to earn their living what they would do is they would make money from keeping people well and they thought you know that just felt a lot better this was the start of the Permanente Medical Group the original HMO Kaiser looked forward to pursuing other opportunities after the war many industrialists thought America would slip back into an economic depression after the war ended they worried that they weren't going to be enough jobs for the returning servicemen Kaiser didn't agree he believed there was tremendous pent up demand for consumer goods that hadn't been available in wartime he knew people had saved a tremendous amount of money during the war and he predicted they'd spend it igniting an unprecedented post-war boom returning servicemen would need hundreds of thousands of new homes an array of consumer products and millions of new cars and trucks Kaiser made forays into several areas but he'd always had a passion for cars he really just loved cars and he decided during World War two to build cars recognizing his lack of experience he teamed up with a veteran automobile executive Joe Frazer to help him launch a new car company unlike Kaiser Joe Fraser had spent virtually his entire life in the automobile business he had come up through the ranks of several various companies at one point he was the president through the Warriors of willys-overland and was very instrumental in spearheading the development and seeing overseeing the Jeep they bought Ford's huge willow a run bomber plant and started to gear up for production a huge huge place on a huge piece of land it had a field where you could fly bombers in and out of and store them I think it was the largest enclosed space in the world at the time Casa always thought big and he was determined to beat the big three auto companies he thought his experience building dams roads and ships during the war had prepared him to compete with the auto giants he told executives in Detroit he was ready to take them on and he says we've got I don't know whether the number was 50 million or 100 million whatever the money was we've got that and said this proudly you know we're coming into the car business and a little voice in the back of the room speaks up and says that buys one blue chip and the meaning was that you don't have enough money they were undercapitalized but determined he and Frazer jumped in initially he wanted to build two distinct car lines the Frazer a traditional car with a six-cylinder engine and the Kaiser a car he once hoped would have a lightweight aluminum body front-wheel drive and an optional v8 but he had to scale back his ambitions and make the Kaiser and Frazer nearly identical he was able to transform Willow Run and begin production in June of 1946 - nearly everyone's disbelief Keizer Fraser became the fourth best-selling car company by 1947 ahead of the other independence Studebaker and Hudson 1947-48 were very good to Kaiser and Fraser production was increasing each year they were being well received as very good in dependable cars numbers were good there was an increase in dealers people rushed to buy the cars as Kaiser had predicted but there were problems one of the big problems that they had was with their engines getting engines for these cars and they were not making their own engines they were buying them and they ended up getting engines that were underpowered for the sized cars that they had and one of the big complaints about the Kaiser cars was that they were small Kaiser was determined to conquer the auto industry as he had done everything else jo Fraser cautioned his partner that the auto industry played by different rules and sometimes it was better to let your competitors have a good year while you conserved your resources mr. Fraser tried to impress upon his colleague and partner that when one was in the automobile game that there was a give-and-take and this didn't really particularly sit well with mr. Kyser in fact he's been quoted as as remarking that kaisers never retreat Caixa ignored Fraser I decided to borrow enough money to build 200,000 cars for 1949 he did this and even though the big three were preparing to flood the market with a staggering array of new cars racer said this was falling and left it had taken several years for the majors to retool after the war by 1948 they had new cars coming off the production lines GM executives were confident when they reviewed their new models but they could out produce any challengers phrases gloomy predictions turned out to be true sales plummeted in 1949 to 58,000 cars Kizer forged ahead like the symbol he'd chosen for his cars the buffalo he kept pushing for changes the cars were given a facelift with a wider more massive grille large horizontal tail lights and other detail changes the convertible was added to the lineup it even had electric windows splashy colors and improved handling set the cars apart the traveller vagabond was the most interesting car some thought it was just one of kaisers wacky ideas but it was really a first to hatchback this utility car had a rear door that split halfway across the trunk lid to form a hinged tailgate it offered buyers the space of a station wagon but it looked like a normal sedan as billed as a utility model that's what we call it here in the club and all uses everything from hauling a sports equipment for a football team to ambulance duty to purse at times quite a novel for the time and useful modification of a sedan summer found uses for the travelers never contemplated by the designers a [Music] lot of comments I love showing it off obviously and sometimes I worry that maybe it detracts a little from the car itself but attention is attention so I don't care how I get Henry tried to keep interest high with a new Kaiser in 1951 the low-cost and Richard Henry J's you bet I'm gonna leave the gas heater in the garage besides the Henry James more fun to drive and to tell the truth this ride circles around the other car yes owners say their new Henry J rides better than cars costing twice the price every Jr's dwelled on the fact that he wanted to produce a thousand dollar car for everybody can have one that was his goal it didn't quite come out that way but it was a small car a lot of people didn't like it it didn't have any frills of any kind it was a stripped-down model but they were a nice car I've driven a lot unfortunately it was too little too late people liked its styling but there were so many other automotive choices by 1951 the Henry J had trouble standing out but Kaiser had one more model ready that some hoped would help save the company the Kaiser Darren a glass fiber bodied roadster with sliding doors was stunning it was designed by noted automotive stylist Howard Dutch Darrin who'd created some of the most beautiful colors in the world including granite package and Duesenberg Dutch Darin was one of Henry kaisers chief designers and was responsible for most of the final design work that you see here and he more or less did that on the side and very unbeknownst to Henry Kaiser and introduced the car and showed the car to Kaiser and at first Henry Kaiser didn't like it but his wife did and so that convinced Henry that it spot a bad idea the sports car market was heating up Chevrolet had the Corvette and Ford was working on the Thunderbird like the Corvette the Darin's suffered from a lack of power people wanted their sports cars to be peppy not just pretty chevrolet had the financial resources of General Motors to fix it something Kaiser couldn't afford [Music] but his car was an attention-getter [Music] it's the 1954 Kaiser Darin and reason I have it is because as a teenager I saw them and fell in love with them and finally convinced my father to get one and we found an old one on a used car lot in Cleveland and this is it he sold 435 darienne's but it was not enough Kaiser had lost a reported hundred million dollars in his ten years in the automobile business he shut down US production in 1955 he was able to continue production of cars in Argentina though the Kaiser freezer company was finished in the United States but he had another car to pursue in North America he took over production of the willest Jeep and transformed it into a civilian mainstay he could forego with a passenger car end of the business and pursue a new market four-wheel drive vehicles Kaiser foresaw the need for an all-round utility vehicle beyond his Vagabond and thought a plusher Jeep would find buyers his Jeep Wagoneer was really the first SUV cars weren't his only focus he'd acquired a number of bauxite mines and set up an aluminum company that challenged Alcoa dominance aluminum appliances put Henry into every home in America and he became a household name when he introduced his quilted Kaiser foil wrap some of his other ideas for the home weren't as good his jet-powered dishwasher spun the dishes around in a circular rack propelled by water a wonderful concept except it broke the dishes [Music] at the same time henry was undertaking a whole new series adventures in hawaii his interests were broad even in retirement he saw possibilities [Music] he was a force of nature while his cars have been largely forgotten he changed the country the American West had never seen anyone like Henry Kaiser he combined vision with courage and entrepreneurial instance he was a leading figure in the 20th century one of the most admired men in the world he didn't always succeed but even when he failed he made a difference [Music]

Channel: King Rose Archives

Views: 315,836

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Keywords: Henry Kaiser, Kaiser Permanente, Kaiser aluminum, Howard Dutch Darrin, orphan cars, automotive history, Kaiser Jeep

Id: 4BGOKXbiLTs

Length: 25min 4sec (1504 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017