Kaiser Day sent me into my car show photo files, looking for more K-Fs to share. This lovely Wedgwood blue over white Virginian was shot nearly a year ago at the excellent Maple City Cruise Night, held every August in Monmouth, IL. This car was cash-strapped K-F’s interpretation of a hardtop.
Since no money was in the kitty for a proper response to the ’49 Roadmaster Riviera and Coupe de Ville (the first one!), Kaiser simply added a mini-window to the B-pillar and called it good. In fact, this may well be the first opera window seen on a postwar American car! The only problem was that Kaiser was about 25 years too early to compete with Cordobas and Monte Carlos.
Still a lovely car though, and this one was restored to a very high standard. I love finding rare cars like these, even though this one was “corralled” at a show and not curbside!
Fabulous find. Actually, I think that Kaiser’s decision tree to making this hardtop was even simpler: they were also making a Kaiser convertible sedan, that appears to be the very same car but with a folding top. I have never understood why they couldn’t deal with frameless door glass on these cars, though it comes off better on the fixed-glass Virginian.
Actually, the center pillar is fairly easy to understand, as it was a fixture of the convertible sedans of the 1930s. In those, it was usually solid metal, but it was to be removed when the top went down. The rest of the industry didn’t figure out how to deal with sealing the glass between the doors until 1956. This center fixed in place I have always found odd. I guess it had to be if the door glass had permanent frames too.
This is actually a very attractive car. Bet it was expensive, though.
Perhaps the first modern appearance of a vinyl top?
You could be right – this predates the 1951 Lincoln Lido Coupe and Mercury Monterey that offered a padded covered roof (because they lacked hardtops).
It depends on what you call modern (Ford had a 2/4 Sport Coupe body for the Model A that had a fabric top, dickey seat, and even fake landau irons back in 1931) and how picky you are about defining “on a production car,” since companies like Derham were putting padded carriage tops on custom and semi-custom limousines by this point.
It was indeed very, very expensive: about $3,200 to start, which for those keeping score put you about halfway between a Cadillac Series 62 sedan and a Coupe de Ville.
Expensive in it’s day is right. A very nice vehicle – no doubt about it. A Chrysler Windsor by comparison is a hot rod; this heavy and large vehicle had that plodding Continental six powering it and stick – which isn’t a bad thing, but Hydra-Matic was the order of the day – and in Kaiser, that would come later . . . . but the problem was that cars of this magnitude and price had at least eight cylinders whether laid out straight or in a “V”.
The convertible sedan version of these looks like a junior version of Ike’s Sunshine Special Presidential Parade Limo from the 50’s.
Even the non-hardtop hardtop looks like it should be “Driving Miss Daisy” circa 1952.
Daisy Werthan: You should have let me keep my old LaSalle. It never would’ve behaved this way and you know it.
Boolie Werthan: Mama, cars don’t behave. They are behaved upon. Fact is, you demolished that Chrysler all by yourself.
Didn’t someone remark in an older CC that the glass B pillar rolled down? Or was that on another car?
As much as I am all about windows that open or roll down, that would be preposterous!
I guess I’ll have to attend a car show or two again…
You might be thinking of the Mazda Cosmo/RX5 from the ’70s. The Cosmo had fixed B-pillars with a small retractable glass window set into them.
This is indeed a four-door hardtop: As on the Kaiser DeLuxe and Frazer Manhattan convertible sedans, the “B-pillar” is really just fixed window channels separated by a piece of (fixed) glass. If you ever get a chance to look at the convertible with the top down and the doors open, it becomes pretty clear, and the Virginian is really just a convertible with a fixed roof instead of the convertible’s power top.
I believe the reason they left the window channels fixed was to avoid having to tool for separate convertible window channels (and do the work necessary to keep them from rattling). The engineers had already done so much belt-and-braces work on the frame, which was hideously expensive, that I think they were just looking for an expedient way to call it done and move on.
As mentioned above, lash-up though it might’ve been this was five years ahead of the industry in getting something like hardtop styling on a 4-door. Could’ve had a successful niche in the market if they could get it out the door for less than Caddy money.
This color combo looks outstanding and the glass B-pillar is a neat (and weird) feature. I knew that there was a Kaiser Virginian model, but I’ve certainly never seen one or had any clue there was something unique about it beyond some trim or a pricetag. Looking at this Kaiser, it also occurs to me that white cars from this era seem to be extremely rare… was it an unpopular color back then or just unpopular with the people who restore them? I can’t wrap my head around whether or not any shades of white would look good on other ’49-ish models. Considering the name and the look, this car makes me want to drive up a long, tree-lined path to a tobacco plantation and sip on some mint juleps, chain smoke Parliaments and listen to old, fat, Southern billionaires make highly inappropriate jokes without using any cusswords.
Yeah – “Virginian.” A singularly unfortunate name.
Here we have a man from San Francisco, of all places…who wants to start a car company. And goes to Detroit to do it…that alone makes me roll my eyeballs. What was wrong with Oakland, in those days? Why did Kaiser feel a physical need to be in the enemy territory?
Okay…and then, having done THAT…name the car for a THIRD area, which neither he nor his adopted home-base have ANYTHING to do with?
The Kaiser badge of the time was a huge K with buffalo grazing above it. What would buffalo, or Kaiser, or Detroit or any of that, have to do with the Olde South?
Although Chevies had been built in Oakland before the war, Kaiser with Frazer were looking for an expedient way to get into the car business after the war. Frazer had been in charge of Graham-Paige, so his expertise in building cars was there and as such, and being a one-time independent, found it better to source the building where the off-the-shelf parts were: Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. These reasons and the aforementioned Willow Run plant the Feds offered made Michigan a no-brainer choice. Nash and Studebaker tried setting up shop in California, but their volume vs. units produced and sold and the cost of their parts having to be shipped in made it unaffordable to stay in business.
Next time you’re in El Segundo (a layover at LAX), go outside the airport a few blocks and you’ll run into Nash Drive off of Sepulveda. Nowadays, high tech aerospace, but the vicinity of those buildings was where Nash-Kelvinator and AMC once built cars (closed after 1956).
Your points make sense.
Although, FWIW, I think that what advantage existed back then no longer does. Hell, the Big Two-and-a-Half don’t build in the Rust Belt anymore! With CAD and foreign suppliers and NAFTA…all an auto manufacturer need do is pull up the drawings, send the digital data to a supplier, and await the bid and then the parts.
I have to wonder, though, what would have happened had Kaiser stuck close to Oakland where he knew how things worked…even pre-Interstate, rail shipments could have handled engines and drivelines. The postwar years were hard for California; he could have had a motivated, inexpensive workforce – at least at first.
And, after all, other independents – Gillig Brothers, for one – did set up shop. Even smaller, in terms of volume. Getting engines, components and the like never seemed to be a problem for them.
But, like I said…in the end, he failed. Why it happened is interesting but pedestrian.
I agree somewhat on the name, but then this car had to be sold nationwide and Virginia did have a bit of old money appeal at the time… I think.
Anyway, Michigan was a simple expedient: the Feds made the Willow Run plant available, and Kaiser was a go-big-or-go-home kind of guy… And Willow Run was as big as it got.
Plus, the suppliers were all there.
These cars make me think all the stuff about dark machinations bringing down Tucker is really a load of BS. If a company like Kaiser couldn’t succeed in the post war era with decent cars in actual production like this sweetie, how was Tucker with almost no capitalisation and a completely unproven design going to survive?
I own a twin to this car. The colors are “Teal” over “Polar Grey.” Kaiser manufactured and marketed the first production hardtop, period. A Virginain is just like any other hardtop- a steel roof simulating a convertible permanantly welded to a production convertible body. The Virginian was introduced in January of ’49, the Coupe de Ville and Riviera did not debut until that summer. The original roof covering is a shimmering nylon very similar in texture to pantyhose. Here is a link to my 12,000 mile totally original example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scott597/8075971368/
It was parked in a dry garage in 1958 after being chauffer driven only 8K miles. It is the only known ’49-’50 Virginian with it’s original roof covering intact.
That is a very, very cool car.
Wow, very pretty car! Looks to be in remarkable condition.
Thanks! The color combination is the same as the car featured in the Virginian brochure and magazine ads. Of the 52 ’49-’50 Virginians accounted for (out of 985 produced) there are about six that exist in this color scheme.