There has been a legal question for almost 20 years as to wether or not Chrysler Corporation (and that appears to be the "old" Chrysler Corporation these days) actually owns the name. Information in the 1954 Kaiser Motors Annual Report indicates that during 1954, Willys Motors acquired spare parts inventories of Kaiser Motors along with tooling, fixtures and other items required to produce the 1954-55 type Kaiser Manhattan automobile. The note, part of the foot note covering a loan to Kaiser Motors from Bank of America indicates that no intangible property (trade marks, names, etc) was involved in the transactions. When this was brought to the attention of Chrysler's legal department they suddenly became unavailable for comment/response. In any event, there is only sketchy documentation that American Motors renewed any of the old stuff during first round requirements (approx. 1980) for anything but Jeep related materials. Also, during the 1980's Chrysler filed papers in an EPA case dealing with Willow Run and stated they did NOT have anything to do with Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, only Kaiser Manufacturing Corporation when it came to degree of involvement in enviornmental issues at Willow Run.
Just to see what the response was, I contacted the bankruptcy attornies to see if K-F trademarks, etc were available for sale and they indicated by failure to respond in any way that there was nothing, toxic or otherwise.
Jack Mueller
Club Historian