The Kaiser Darrin, also known as the Kaiser Darrin 161 or in short as the Darrin, was an American sports car designed by Howard "Dutch" Darrin and built by Kaiser Motors for the 1954 model year. Essentially a revamp of Kaiser's Henry J compact, the Kaiser Darrin was one of its designer's final achievements and was noted for being the second (behind the 1953 Corvette) American car equipped with a fiberglass body and doors that slid on tracks into the front fender wells. The car was named both for Henry J. Kaiser, head of Kaiser Motors, and Darrin.
The Darrin was conceived as part of a movement in Detroit to compete head-to-head with European roadsters being imported to and sold in the United States in the post–World War II period. Among other products developed were the Ford Thunderbird in its initial two-seat form and Chevrolet Corvette. While the Darrin was designed attractively, it was also underpowered and, while a good performer overall, did not measure up to foreign vehicles such as the Nash-Healey or Triumph TR2. The Darrin's high price tag, lack of consumer confidence in Kaiser's viability and practical challenges with the car's design resulted in low sales, though sports cars at the time were generally not fast sellers.
Only 435 production Darrins and six prototypes were built. Crumbling corporate finances, pending loss of assembly facilities and a freak snowstorm that reportedly ruined 50 of the cars all conspired to terminate the program. Darrin bought those 50 vehicles and whatever others Kaiser had left in storage and sold those from his Hollywood, California showroom. Many of the cars' engines were retrofitted with superchargers and multiple carburation to improve performance. Six were rumored to have been re-engined with Cadillac Eldorado V-8 units, however, none have survived subjecting the story to some skepticism. There was one V8 engined Darrin raced at Tory Pines in November 1954 and a wrecked Darrin rebuilt into a drag racer by Lee and Gary Abrahams of Tucson, Arizona in the early 1960s. There's one in an episode of My Classic Car.
Background
Kaiser
By the end of his life, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser had built a personal empire which included more than 100 various companies that ranged from construction and manufacturing to health care. He had begun with a cement business in Vancouver, British Columbia. A contract to build roads in Cuba in 1927 was followed with work on the Hoover and Grand Coulee dams. In 1939, he entered the shipbuilding industry. Even though he had never built a ship before then, by 1943 he had more than 300,000 employees in seven shipyards and ultimately built 1,490 Liberty Ships during World War II. An exceptional organizer and with a penchant for lateral thinking, Kaiser tended to bulldoze his way through a problem. In areas that lacked infrastructure to support his work force, Kaiser and his son Edgar built entire cities within months. If there was a shortage of steel, he built a foundry or found a way to substitute aluminum. All that Kaiser tended to lack, according to writer Aaron Severson, was a sense of his own limitations.
Kaiser had begun to consider entering the automobile business in 1942, when the United States government halted production of civilian vehicles to focus on military ones due to the country's entry into World War II. With an eye toward postwar needs, Kaiser assembled a team of "idea men" to conceive a compact, lightweight car that the average working man could afford. By 1945, efforts had reached the prototype stage with the K-85, not a compact car but one with several advanced features, which included front wheel drive, unibody construction and a combination of torsion-bar springs and a torsion-beam rear axle called "Torsionetic Suspension." In partnership with automotive executive Joseph W. Frazer, Kaiser formed Kaiser-Frazer Corporation on July 25, 1945. Late that year, Kaiser-Frazer leased the Ford factory complex in Willow Run, near Detroit, Michigan as its manufacturing base.
