Kaiser Frazer and associated companies in India, 1940s-70s

[kaiserfrazerindia]

Dear forum members,

I am a historian, currently working on the development of India's automotive industry. I am writing to ask if anyone here can provide further information on the history of Kaiser Frazer in general and of the interests of the concern in India in particular. I found that the company (or the Kaiser Frazer Export Corporation) had a tie-up/cooperation agreement with the Motor House (Gujarat) Ltd. This cooperation seems to have been active until 1956 at least, and it consisted of import, assembly and later manufacture of US cars in India. Other literature suggests that Kaiser Frazer had more substantial interests in the Indian market even later on. For example, Kaiser-owned Willys-Overland agreed to the manufacture of Willys jeeps in India after the 1940s.

I found it very difficult to retrieve more information on these aspect as well as on the history of the company. Do you know more about exports of Kaiser products to India or cooperations with Indian manufacturers? Has Kaiser created or left behind a company archive of some sort, where I might find further information on this? I would be very grateful for any further leads and discussions on these aspects.

Best wishes,
Stefan

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Motor House Ltd joined forces with Kaiser-Frazer Export Corporation in 1947 to assemble Kaiser and Frazer cars for sale in the sub-continent and adjacent countries or colonial territories.  I Have a couple of people pictures (company staff, etc) but nothing of the facility.  I understood this to be a distributor based operation with no actually manufacturing plant.  Do you have additional info?

[pnw_oldmags]

This was probably one of their dealers printing these ads.

If you want scans of the backs let me know.

[kaiserfrazerindia]

Thank you very much for your responses!

My information on Kaiser and its subsidiaries or parent companies is very week so far. There's a bit of stray information here and there. For example, I found that companies like Kaiser Engineers Overseas Corp. and Willys Overland Export Corporation sponsored a 1959 conference in Washington by the Committee for International Economic Growth on "India and the United States".

I will keep watching for information on this and other cooperations between Indian and US car makers and look forward to sharing this with you here. But I think I will find more substantial information only in relevant company archives. Kaiser and/or Willys might have archives of themselves, but relevant material might have also become part of the archives of the American Motor Company (AMC) if these exist. This latter company took over Kaiser and Willys in the 1950s. Can anyone provide more information on this?

I would be grateful for further leads in this regard!

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Kaiser-Frazer's factory archives are no more.  The only Willys-Overland/Willys Motors items around are jeep-related.  When Chrysler Corporation bought AMC in the mid 1980's they only wanted Jeep stuff; the rest disappeared or went off the books.  A fire in the basement of the old Willys administration building in 1955 destroyed some of the stuff, the rest went to landfill when the building was torn down in the early 1970's.

It is my understanding that in an effort to enlarge its industrial base when they got independence from England, the Indian government established various trade barriers (tariffs, etc) to discourage the importing of foreign makes.  Hindustian (? on the spelling) was supposed to have the "in" with the new government and it was many years later that the market truly began to open up.

Motor House LTD's connection with K-F ended during the 1949 model year and that a small number of cars were assembled and sold by them.  There are no numbers at present to identify how many of what type vehicles (the Operating Reports lumped all overseas sales except Canada together) were sent out to them.  The ads shown are for the Pakistani distributor which ordered cars from Willow Run and later from Rotterdam and Haifa as those plants came on line in 1949 and 1951, respectively.  Cars sold out of Karachi included 2 Frazer and 1 Kaiser convertible (1949's) which were sold to the government as parade and other official duties cars.  They are still around in a museum in the Karachi area. 

Cars assembled at Motor House LTD may have both a K-F and a Motor House LTD identification tag on them.

Kaiser Engineers had nothing to do with Kaiser-Frazer; they were a construction company within the Kaiser family of companies.

[Aeroman]

Quite a bit of documentation was being thrown away at Willys-Overland when AMC took over. Paul Brim rescued as much as he could. I do not know what happened to it all after he died. Jack (or anybody) do you know? There was a heckuva lot of info there. I know Bill Tilden had a bit of Willys documentation and his estate is still being sorted out.

[joefrazer]

After Paul passed away, there was a large auction of his estate that I attended. I bought NOS Aero doors for $5 apiece, enough Jeepster/wagon fenders to last a lifetime, and lots and lots of other stuff. Another club member bought some of the literature - most of which consisted of owner's manuals still bound in the wrappers from the print company in Toledo. There wasn't much factory documentation - I recall Paul telling me that WO stored records in the basement and what didn't burn in the fire was ruined a few years later when a pipe burst.

Paul ran a lumber yard and when KF decided to move from Willow Run, he took a couple of his stake trucks to the factory and loaded whatever they wanted rid of. One of the items included the conference table, chairs and telephones from HJK's office as well as all of the paneling from Edgar's office. The conference table and furniture was in the Jeep House museum in Toledo until Chrysler tore it down about 10 years ago. This is not the same table and furniture as is in the museum in Ypsi, Michigan. The paneling adorned Paul's den at his home in Rudolph, Ohio. I do not know what became of the table.