K-F paint and upholstery sample books

[Gordie]

Many of us have the large 9" x 12" color and upholstery sample books and they are very useful for the 1949 era cars.  It was so popular that in the middle of the year they came out with a second green book so that they could add new  upholstery samples that had been added during the year..  My copies have very thick stiff covers that picture a palette and paint brushes and color samples on the cover.  I recently had a chance to get a nos red cover in leather but with no paint samples on the palette.  In comparing it to the original it is nothing like the covers on my book.  Are these replacement covers or was there an additional edition.  I also had a NOS green cover which was all leather but not the thick style as on my books.  Does anyone have a set of books with just the leather covers and not the thick solid covers?

[Dragon]

There seem to be several variations of this.  Some of the books have hard cover and some have a soft cover.  I haven't found much history on these.

[Gordie]

Wow! What a great collection.  I had heard that past KFOCI President Ken Mericle had found many of these covers in the trash at Willow run and gave them away at one of the National Meets.  As far as I am aware only two of the hard bound books with the upholstery and paint samples were issued.  The various soft covers were genuine leather.  Does any one know of other additions that may have been issued later?

[Dragon]

I do have another one somewhere that was from that meet (I think Michigan 1974).  Ken gave them out with stock certificates and several other items inserted in them.  If I can find it I will put on pictures.  I always wondered if he threw the insides of them away so he could put the meet agenda in them.

[Dragon]

I have three that have hard binding.  green, red and blue.

[Gordie]

I have all of the pages and program from the Seaway group meet at Dearborn and held at the Dearborn Inn, a very high end Hotel in Dearborn and the pages do in fact fit into one of the leather binders so that must have been where the loose binders came from.  My extra red one looks like it has never been used and is the soft leather version.  Does your blue hard cover book have different pages than the more common red and green books contain?  In rechecking my copies I see that only the first edition has the stiff covers and the second edition has the soft cover.  Mine is in blue.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Like many of the books I have seen (and the set I have) they have the swatches and samples of paint but no information as to what is what.  Thanks to Les Rolfs KFOCI HANDBOOK's next release will have that information as he sent pictures of what he has from the old family dealership which has the cardboard tags in it as well as the Introduction Pages put in by the factory. The full content is also found now on CIRCLEKF.COM, the website owned by Jim Betts which is not part of the club.

[Gordie]

Fortunately these book have partial size oilette pages in front of the samples giving the names of the paint colors and type of upholstery with code numbers for each and describing which colors could be ordered with which upholstery combinations.  Typically in 1949 with other makes you got one type of upholstery for the standard models and another for the deluxe types.  K-F had a tremendous variety of colors and trims but unfortunately it did not help to sell the cars but they were certainly beautiful.