Upholstery book

[R-Sargent]

I have a 51 frazer Vagabond that had the interior restored about twenty years ago and i would like to compare the color with a factory sample to see how close it is to original . It is suppose to be 5554 Garden green pleated vinyl which i have never seen in a vagabond before there is only one other car in the registry with this trim code , my other vagabonds had the 5560 green pleated vinyl and were much lighter than this one and i think was used on the 49-50 models also . Does anyone have a parts car with this garden green and maybe send me a small piece ?  Or would someone sell a factory 1951 sample book ?

[Gordie]

I'm not aware of color and upholstery books for K-F products except for the two made for the 1949 cars. The first red cover book has both paint chips and upholstery samples but the second green cover book has upholstery supplements only and neither has any vinyl samples.  Many of the data books have color chips but not upholstery samples.

[R-Sargent]

I wonder why only 49' ?   

[Gordie]

They were very lavish books and expensive to make with genuine leather covers.  Most U.S. manufacturers used color and upholstery books from about 1955 on and they were meant for dealers and salesmen only. They were produced in limited quantities and had to be purchased by the dealers so are scarce today.  Data books were made for salesman's use and are easier to find and are available from 1947 up to 1954 separately for both Kaiser and Frazer.  I don't believe that any were made for 1950 models or for 1955 as they continued to use the prior year books.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

There is evidence to indicate there could have been a 1948 model year book, and possibly a 1951 book for the Kaiser ONLY but the only model years we can tie up on this are 1949-50 (1950 being same as 1949's books) that include a number of colors and trims that did not make production or were used on cars for a very short period of time.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the books are missing the critical piece of information that was the identification tag indicating color name, number and application (see upcoming article in a future issue of KFOCI MONTHLY BULLETIN) as well as the books I will bring to the 2015 National.