Not Trivia

If you’re a car nut, you’re a car nut, your family and friends might as well get over it. In my growing up years in Panama City, the exciting time of year was early autumn. Evenings might be cool. Searchlights would start playing in the sky. It meant somebody’s showroom had their new model car on display. The new models were always introduced in the fall, and the new model was always noticeably different from the previous year’s model. At least to me.

Car trivia? No way. The 1946 Ford had  rectangular parking lights up high between the headlamps and the grille, and two chrome stripes down low on the trunk; the ’47 and ’48 Fords had one stripe up high on the trunk and a round parking light under each headlamp. 1947 Buicks had a white steering wheel, the 1948 Buick had a black steering wheel. You distinguished the 1949 and 1950 Fords by the parking lights. Same with the 1950 v.s.1951 Cadillacs. The 1947 Kaiser had a delicate front grille, the 1949 Kaiser had a heavy, bold grille. 

The 1950 Oldsmobile 98 was a sleek beauty, the 1951 Olds 98 was the same car gooshed up with chrome.

Only a car nut knows when Ford and Cadillac switched from a flat-head V-8 to OHV and when Buick dropped their Straight Eight in favor of a V-8. I knew all the important stuff like that. Thousands of bits of information tucked away in a mind that couldn’t remember one single chemistry formula and couldn’t tell a Bach fugue from a Beethoven sonata. 

Who knows a 1951 Kaiser from a 1951 Frazer? The Shadow knows. And has an old car trunk loaded with brochures to prove it.

The building at the NE corner of Cincinnati Avenue/18th Street/Hwy 98 in “Little Dothan” was an elegant art deco showroom for Kaiser and Frazer automobiles. 

They debuted with the 1946 model at the end of World War II and lasted into the1950s. Early K-F cars were stodgy to the max, but sold like hotcakes in the car shortage after the war. 

Later models were magnificent when first introduced, then, like most cars of the day, laden up with different strips of chrome to distinguish each model year. 

Pop, my grandfather Weller, had one of the first Kaiser cars in Panama City. He traded in his 1937 Chevrolet for it, drove it several years, then went back to Nelson Chevrolet for a new black 1951 Chevy sedan.

Henry Kaiser and Joseph Frazer broke up not long after they started, Henry borrowed too much money to suit Joe, and Joe split. The company soon dropped the Frazer name and went on with the beautiful Kaiser Manhattan.

For all sorts of financial reasons, an independent car manufacturer couldn’t last against the Big Three, GM, Ford, and Chrysler. Kaiser merged to become Kaiser-Jeep, then sold to American Motors. Nash and Hudson became Rambler cars, and now Chrysler owns Jeep. Kaiser moved to Argentina and produced cars there into the 1960s.