During World War II, Henry Kaiser set up the "hobby lobby" engineering unit to work on possible products fot the Kaiser organization to produce after the war. Many of the projects were automobiles developed in accordance with specifications set dowy by Henry J. Kaiser himself. When Kaiser-Frazer was formed in 1945 and Willow Run was secured, the automobile work moved to Michigan. The cars that were underdevelopment for the Kaiser project were smaller cars but Henry wanted a full sized car, using the design of the Frazer car as a base. By the end of 1945, the project changed from a smaller car (to meet Henry's desired price point) to the full-sized front=wheel drive car with torsion-bar suspension and unit body construction. The prototype was shown to the public at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City during late January 1945.
Unfortunately, there were problems with the special transmission the drivetrain required, the front suspension system, and the car required a power-assist because of the weight on the front wheels. It was decided to replace the K-85 with a model based on the entire Graham-Paige Frazer platform, which was announced in May 1946 as the Kaiser Special. The two prototypes were scrapped in 1946 and finally went to the crusher in the early 1960's. Here are some pictures of the vehicle. The magazine ad (the first color ad run by Kaiser-Frazer and Graham-Paige) was the last ad to feature the K-85 by name.
