Kaiser-Frazer never offered a station wagon in its all-too-brief history, but if it had, it could have looked something like this Brooks Stevens proposal.
In the post-World War II era, Brooks Stevens was easily the most prolific of the Motor City’s independent auto designers. The Milwaukee industrial designer successfully landed styling contracts with Studebaker, American Motors, Willys-Overland, and Kaiser-Frazer, not to mention Harley-Davidson, the Outboard Marine Corporation, and numerous one-offs.
Kaiser-Frazer could certainly use his help, as when the company launched in 1946, its product line consisted of just a single body type, a four-door sedan. In December of 1948, Stevens submitted a number of proposals for alternative body styles all based on the basic K-F sedan platform, including a fastback two-door sedan, a four-door hardtop based on the Frazer convertible sedan, and most intriguingly, perhaps, a station wagon.
Actually, Brooks Stevens and Associates prepared a pair of wagon proposals (above and below). Both featured all-steel bodies, fairly advanced for ’48, but the second (below) added a panel-effect side treatment, creating a simulated woody theme. Of course, Stevens had already put this gimmick to successful use in his design for the all-steel 1946 Willys Station Wagon. (More on the Willys wagon here.)
Stevens described the non-paneled version of his K-F wagon as a “country sedan,” predating Ford’s use of the model name by four years. There’s no indication as to which Stevens proposal was the “A” design. Maybe both could be produced, with the standard version badged as a Kaiser and the faux woody as a Frazer, or vice versa.
As we know, the K-F station wagon was never approved for production. The Willow Run car maker was chronically undercaptalized, and it couldn’t or wouldn’t justify the funding to tool up a wagon body shell. Instead, the company developed a low-investment alternative, a sedan-based wagon/sedan hybrid that was marketed as the Kaiser Traveler and Frazer Vagabond. (See our feature on the Traveler and Vagabond here.) It was a clever design but never sold in any great numbers.
The hopes and dreams for a K-F station wagon weren’t completely extinguished, however. In March of 1952, Stevens presented multiple proposals for a two-door wagon based on the compact Henry J (below). All were cute as a button. Reportedly, this wagon would be marketed exclusively as an Allstate, with Sears, Roebuck and Company funding the tooling and production development. But since sales of the Henry J and its Allstate derivative were disappointing at best, the plan failed to go anywhere. Kaiser never would produce a station wagon until it acquired Willys-Overland in 1953 and became Willys Motors, Inc.
I always enjoy articles about Kaiser-Fraiser ‘what ifs’, but the bottom line was that as long as KF stuck with that off-the-shelf Continental Six, they were history. That, more than anything killed them in the long run. When the competition was coming up with massive advances in engine technology between the 49-51 model years, they stuck with an engine designed during the Depression and incapable of the necessary technological advance.
I can’t look away from those super-sized front vent windows on the ’48’s. Just a fly in the artwork? A necessary compromise? A styling gimmick that never caught on? A bit of each?
Never mind that, the windshield NOT being supersized is what throws the design off. I can’t unsee the ’49-51 Ford/Merc wagons’ fivehead, this one looks even taller than those.
The Henry J proposal only makes me wonder why they didn’t go ahead and make a Traveler hatchback of it using the original fastback body. It already had a contiguous passenger/cargo area and folding rear seat, dictated by the original plan of not having an external trunk lid. Under those conditions cutting in a hatchback wouldn’t have been much more difficult than cutting in a trunk lid was.
The skirted rear wheels with the wide chrome band along the lower body of these are like the rebodied 1951 Kaiser. I think these were intended as part of that line. One view does show a split windshield like the original model but it’s also seen with the curve at the top like the 1951. But these are not exact designs but really just sketches. In reality the windshield was taller and would leave less (but too much) forehead metal above it.
This story is full of irony. The perpendicular Willys wagons, when equipped with 4wd (from 1949?) were arguably the first American sport utility vehicles. Today’s versions of that idiom seem to be the best-selling vehicles of our age. Granted, they’re not Kaisers or Willyses, but the Jeep brand lives on with Stellantis.