Kaiser Darrin: It Could've Been a Contender

A brief flashback to 1954: Early in the year Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio, the US Navy launched Nautilus, its first nuclear submarine, and President Dwight Eisenhower warned against American involvement in Vietnam, where the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu would fall in May after a 4-month siege. Sixty-five Octobers ago, film maker Elia Kazan would release "On the Waterfront", in which Marlon Brando utters the line, "I coulda been a contender"...

An episode of "The Man in High Castle" TV series prompted speculation about the mysterious convertible which appeared in one scene.  One viewer speculated that the design was so exotic it might have been created just for the show.  Well, except for the fact that the car is now 65 years old, it might not have been that much of a mystery. The  two-seater roadster had already been immortalized in a stamp series issued by the US Postal Service in 2005, along with three of its competitors from the early 1950s...

The car was the Kaiser Darrin 161, named for its body designer and the size of its F-head Willys* engine, which was a sturdy little power plant few people noticed, as they were wowed by Howard "Dutch" Darrin's sliding doors and the curvy fiberglass body, which Kaiser-Frazer (later Kaiser Willys) claimed was the first such body to enter production.  It wasn't; the 161 was beaten into production by Chevrolet's Corvette.  Mighty GM had a hard time selling 300 of those in 1953, because the Corvette's price would've bought a top-line Buick with that year's new V8, and Corvette buyers had to be content with the Blue Flame 6, which wasn't a match for the Jag XK120 or any of GM's other V8s.  Similarly, the 90 to 95 hp offered by the Darrin's Willys six offered 0 to 60 in 15 seconds, not exactly Jaguar performance, but for a Jaguar price of around $3,700.  Other things went wrong, too...

Darrin's insistence on those tricky sliding doors led to difficult operation when the tracks got dirty, and as can be seen in the photo above, the placement and design of the door handle impinged upon an already-narrow opening. The design also precluded wind-up windows, but those weren't featured on the Corvette or the Farina-designed Nash Healey roadster either. The production 161 had a nose and fenders which pointed oddly skyward, the result of Kaiser's worries about meeting headlight height requirements.  Apparently nobody at Kaiser noticed that the Porsche 356 and Jag XK120 were sold legally with lower headlight mountings...

The prototype which appeared well before the first production cars which went on sale in January 1954 had less-round wheel cutouts, along with a divided windshield and bright metal trim strips along the rocker panels. Only 435 Darrins were built from January '54 to the halt of production in August of that year.  There were also 6 prototypes, and about 50 cars were damaged when a big snow storm caught them outside the plant.  Howard Darrin bought the damaged cars at a steep discount, and mounted superchargers on some and Cadillac V8s in others*.  This improved performance as might be expected, but was likely all the Darrin chassis, based upon the 100-inch wheelbase of Kaiser's ill-fated compact Henry J, could handle. Two other cars in the postage stamp series had better fates: Studebaker's graceful, larger and much less expensive '53 Starliner offered a V8, and despite initial production difficulties, sold over 46,000 coupes and hardtops in '53. Nash sold over 402 of its Pinin Farina styled Nash Healey* from '52 to '54, and 104 of the British-bodied '51 model, and that has to count as a success, considering prices ranging from $4,700 for the PF roadsters to $5,900 for the coupes.  Ford's V8 T-Bird was heading for this market niche in 1955, and with prices starting just under $3k, Ford would sell over 16,000 copies in that first year.

This highlights the dilemma faced by Kaiser's Darrin all along.  It was a Hail Mary pass meant to revive Kaiser's fortunes after Henry Kaiser made the mistake of pushing ahead with the compact, bare-bones Henry J instead of producing the V8 his engineers had designed, despite Kaiser's high production costs, which meant the firm could only make money on middle-to-upper bracket cars. Kaiser merged with Willys* during this period, and the demand for Jeeps kept their production lines busy through the 1960s.  The Darrin two-seater might have been a contender with the right ratio of performance to price.  Instead, it now makes for an intriguing footnote to the growth of the sports car movement in the Fifties.

                             

*Errata:  

Though historian Richard Langworth and Wikipedia claim several Kaiser Darrins got Cadillac engines, the Kaiser Frazer Owners Club confims only one, which went to Mrs. Briggs Cunningham, who raced it a few times.  

*Footnote:  

The Nash Healey saga is recounted in "Italian Jobs from the Heartland, Part 1",  posted Nov. 17, 2016.  The Willys Aero story, including some notes on the F-head engine, appears in "Willys Aero Saga: An Afterlife in Rio", our post for August 29, 2019.

Photo Credits:  

Top:  movies.stackexchange.com

2nd thru 5th:  US Postal Service

6th:  the author

7th & 8th: Kaiser-Frazer Corporation

Bottom: barrett-jackson.com

Lime Rock Concours: Alfa, Bugatti, Ferrari, Maserati & Etceterini

This year's Lime Rock Concours and Vintage Races at the old track in Connecticut were reminders that lots of technically intriguing, visually arresting cars were built long before anybody thought of putting microchips in cars, or building them on robotic assembly lines. We'll begin with a skiff-bodied Bugatti from the 1920s...

Based upon the long wheelbase and the mid-Twenties body design, this could be a Type 38, made from 1926-'27. The engine architecture, a single overhead cam straight 8 with 3 valves per cylinder, is related to the 4-cylinder Type 23 as well as the later Type 35 GP straight 8s. In Types 30 and 38, it was just under 2 liters, and in the T43 that came after, it matched the Type 35 at 2,261 cc.

The interior is a visual feast of alloy, wood and leather.  Plastic had yet to show up in cars.

Bugatti's great rival from the Twenties and Thirties, Alfa Romeo, showed up in variations spanning 3 decades, including rare 8C racers in a couple of forms.  Below is an 8C 35 single seater from 1935-36; it managed to embarrass a field of much newer cars.

The Jano-designed 8 cylinder engines featured two monoblocs separated by a tower of gears for the cam drives.  The 8C 35 was raced in displacements up to 3.8 liters, and Alfa's race team, Scuderia Ferrari (yes, that Ferrari) supplemented it with a 4.1 liter V12 which made 60 hp more, called the 12C-36.

The Michelotti-designed Moretti spiders from the mid-Fifties shown below still featured engines of Moretti design and manufacture, in 750c and 1,200cc sizes.  This and other Morettis are featured in our post for Dec. 8, 2015, "The Etceterini Files Part 2: Golden Arrow, the Moretti That Broke the Bank."

The Siata 208S spider also featured a Michelotti body design, built by Motto*.  With 70-degree, 2-liter Fiat V8, and 4-wheel independent suspension adapted from a Fiat off-road vehicle, it charmed Road & Track testers in 1955, even at $5,300... 

Siata 208CS coupes like the one below were built at first by Stablimenti Farina and then by Balbo when the first firm folded.  Coupes in other styles were offered by Vignale. The Siata 208 and related Fiat 8V are featured in our post for Nov. 13, 2016, "The Etceterini Files Part 10."

The period of the early-to-mid Fifties was a fertile one for Italy's body designers. The Zagato bodied Maserati A6G 2000 below aims for the same goals as the Siata above (light weight, aerodynamics), but arrives at different design solutions. Where the Siata features concealed headlights and a wraparound windshield, Zagato's Maserati stays with more conventional fender and windshield shapes, but offers curved side windows and careful attention to air intake and exhaust vents. Zagato also offered the option of the "double bubble" roof, which this car lacks.

What it has is the famous 2 liter inline six with twin overhead cams and two spark plugs per cylinder. This view shows the subtle contours and the side windows curved in section, a feature as unusual in 1954 as the Siata's pop-up headlights.

The Zagato-bodied SZ from 1960-'61 was the first Zagato-bodied Giulietta actually offered by the Alfa factory, though there had been earlier custom cars and lightweight versions of the 1900.  The smooth form, tactile and rounded, relates to the Zagato Lancias and Abarths, but has Alfa-specific features, from the grille to the greenhouse and indented flanks.  A red Zagato-bodied TZ (T for tubular chassis, even lighter than the SZ) sits next to the silver car, and shows the design changes wrought by 1963... 

Similarly, the Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France in the foreground below shows the evolution of style at Pininfarina between that car (built 1956-'59) and the famous SWB (short wheelbase) 250GT built from 1959-'62. The Tour de France is built on the 102 inch wheelbase of the Pininfarina grand tourers, while the SWB is on the 94.5 inch wheelbase of the later GTO and Lusso.  The California spider built during this period was available on both wheelbases.

The cockpit on the TdF is purposeful and just short of stark...less decorative than the Maserati shown from 3 or 4 years earlier.                               

The SWB in the foreground always featured open headlights owing to a short-lived 1959 Italian law that banned covered lights. TdFs built in '59, like all SWBs, had open headlights. The SWB has a glassier cabin, and was available in alloy or steel-bodied versions. No matter how many children you have, selling even one of these cars at auction will put them all through Stanford, MIT, or Harvard...

The first sports racer with the 250 Testa Rossa ("red head") version of Colombo's V12 design appeared in 1957 with the scoop-fendered design below, built by Scaglietti. There had been a previous 625 Testa Rossa, with 2.5 liter inline four, and a couple were bodied by Touring.

Most Ferrari models during this period were designated by their individual cylinder displacement, but there was nothing in the type name to tell you whether the car had 4, 6 or 12 cylinders...and Ferrari offered variations on all 3 configurations, plus running the Lancia V8 engine in Formula 1. So there was no way of telling without opening the hood that a 750 Monza, with its 4 cylinders, had the same displacement as this 250 Testa Rossa, with 12...

The Testa Rossa TRI-61 below shows Ferrari's rapid progress in body design around the time of their Championship-winning 1961 GP car and the first mid-engined cars turned out by Carlo Chiti's engineering team.  All these cars initially shared Chiti's distinctive twin-nostril air intake, and a wraparound windscreen with side windows meeting a high, chopped Kamm Theory tail...

To which Ferrari engineers added the distinctive turned-up spoiler, which increased downforce and improved handling at the cost of a slight decrease in top speed.  That year's new mid-engined cars, the Dino V6-powered 196 and 286 SP, as well as the Chiti designed 248 V8, were visually identical and tested in the wind tunnel.  The TRI-61 featured a new space frame chassis to complement the new Fantuzzi bodywork, and the disc brakes and five-speed transmission which had shown up in the previous series. The engine, still at the front, was the reliable Colombo-designed Type 128 three-liter SOHC V12, with the dry-sump lubrication from 1960 allowing a lower hood.  The Testa Rossa engine featured double-helical valve springs, another first for Ferrari.  Despite the low production (2 cars), TRI-61s won Sebring twice and Le Mans once before mid-engined cars, many of them Ferraris, took over. 

The 250 GTO which appeared late in 1962 was proposed by Ferrari as a version of the long-running 250 GT series. In line with that, the wheelbase matched the SWB at 94.5 inches.  The chassis was designed by Giotto Bizzarrini, and Ferrari claimed this was a production GT car, despite the fact that only 36 of the FIA-required 100 examples were built.

Among the cars tested in the new wind tunnel were the visually-identical V6 Dino-engined 196 and 286 SP, as well as the Carlo Chiti-designed V8s, the 248 and 268 from 1963.  Two years after the 1961 "palace revolt" when Chiti and Bizzarrini left Ferrari, the twin-nostril grilles of the early 250P and TRI 61 had been replaced by air intakes like the one below.  On the V6 and V8 cars, the first two numbers refer to engine (rather than individual cylinder) displacement, and the third number refers to the number of cylinders... 

Ferrari's 250 LM (below) was introduced late in 1963 as a closed "road car" version of the 250 P sports racer.  Ferrari's strategy to get the car homologated as a GT car rather than a prototype was to give the impression that this mid-engined racer was a variation of the 250 series of production cars, just as the previous front-engined GTO had been... 

Despite the name, all 250 LMs were produced with a 3.3 liter single overhead cam V12, so the engine was really a 275. Ferrari was unable to build 100 units of the LM, producing only 32 through 1965.  The Ferrari factory declined to enter an LM in the prototype class at the '65 Le Mans, Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team entered one, driven by American Masten Gregory and Jochen Rindt, who thrashed the car for hours on end, feeling that they had no chance of winning anyway.  To their surprise, the sturdy engine and transaxle held together, and they won the race, beating the newcomer Fords.  The deep "tunnel roof" is an exaggerated version of the roof on the front-engined GTO64...

The 250 GT Lusso, built from 1962 through '64 in just over 350 copies, is a reminder of what Ferrari's real production cars were during this era. The subtle contours of the Pininfarina-designed, Scaglietti-built body provide a tasteful skin over a tubular chassis related to the competition GTO. The way the arc of the front fender fades into the door is especially fetching, and the proportions belie the 94 inch wheelbase shared with the SWB and GTO. Like the GTO, there was a simple live axle rear suspension, but also a disc brake at each wheel. Years later, East Coast distributor Luigi Chinetti commented that the Lusso was perhaps the last of the  light, simple and reasonably-priced twelve cylinder Ferraris.  

The Lusso was probably the first production car, and the first production Ferrari, to feature the Kamm Theory tail with subtle spoiler at the deck edge...

                            

The Bizzarrini P538 below was designed by exiled Ferrari engineer Giotto Bizzarrini, and three of the four cars built featured a 5.3 liter, mid-mounted Chevy V8, thus the name 538... 

One of the 4 cars, however, featured a Lamborghini V12, which meant that it was the only Bizzarrini to feature an engine as well as a chassis designed by its namesake.  The 538 history is reviewed on our post from Feb. 27, 2019, "The Etceterini Files Part 18: Bizzarrini P538."

*Footnote:  The diverse work of coach builder Rocco Motto is surveyed in our post for March 25, 2018, entitled "Unsung Genius: Rocco Motto, the Closer."

Photo Credit:  All photos were taken and submitted by LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN, with the exception of the Ferrari Lusso rear view, which was by the author.

Maximum Bugatti? Type 55 Super Sport

Bugattis from the 1920s and 1930s were already considered classic cars halfway through the 20th century, when the factory in Alsace Lorraine was still talking about relaunching car production. In 1951 Ken Purdy was writing worshipful prose about them in his pioneering book, Kings of the Road, and heaping praise upon other certified collector's items like Alfa Romeo and Hispano-Suiza. The Type 35 Bugatti had compiled the longest list of victories in racing history; and the vast Type 41 Royale, a holy grail for collectors with only half a dozen built, was one of the biggest cars in memory.  But Purdy began his Bugatti chapter with a little blue coupe appearing in the distance down a tree-lined road, aiming to make the Paris to Nice run in record time...

This reminded the reader that the name Bugatti was mostly associated with lightweight, nimble cars producing a remarkable amount of power from relatively small engines. The giant Royale, after all, had been a commercial flop. Where would one look to find the essential Bugatti, the Maximum Bugatti?  No, not the modern 1,000 hp lifestyle accessory that maker VW claims is a Bugatti, but the one Bugatti combining the technical details, visual design themes and personality traits most associated with the marque...

                                                

You could easily make a less worthy choice than the Type 55, built from 1931 to '35, and powered by the 2.3 liter inline 8 cylinder Type 51 GP engine, itself a twin-cam supercharged version of the SOHC block that had powered the immortal Type 35 racer.  Beginning with the trademark flat horseshoe radiator (Bugatti's slogan was Le Pur Sang, the purebred among cars), Jean Bugatti, son of founder Ettore, sketched what became the essence of roadster form, with the whimsical sine-wave fenders sheltering flat-spoke alloy wheels made famous on Bugatti racers.  Even for a machine, it had an especially mechanical character, with solid axles front and rear, and mechanical brakes. Unlike Delage, Bugatti was slow to adopt hydraulics...

The fold-down windshield and deeply scooped door panels, along with the purposeful arrangement of controls and instruments, were a reminder of the car's purpose: fun for those who could afford it. Prices matched those of the competing Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 which also appeared in 1931: about $10,000, a fortune back then. The twin spare tires mounted at the rear were a reminder that the fun might be interrupted. The maintenance routines that Bugattis demanded of their owners were so notorious that around a decade after Purdy's book, the magazine Sports Car Quarterly printed an article entitled "Be Glad You Don't Own a Bugatti."

The engines were things of beauty, though, with shear, crisp geometry, allegedly influenced by Cubism, and hand-tooled patterns on the cam covers that became another trademark feature. Power was about 130-135 hp, a bit less than the 2.3 liter Alfa 8C, but the T55 Super Sport shown here weighs a bit less than 2,100 lb.  This example, from 1933, lives in the Collier Collection at the Revs Institute and gets exercised regularly. The museum catalog points out that some of those people who feel this is the most beautiful of sports car designs are not even Bugatti fans.  Bugatti built some impressive cars after it, including the Type 57 road cars and Type 59 GP car, but none of them ever looked more like a Bugatti than this one.

*Footnote:  The Bugatti T57 Atlantic was feature in our post for June 11, 2017 entitled "Authenticity vs. Originality: A Tale of Four (or Five} Bugattis", and a rare T51 with coupe bodywork is shown in "On a Lazy Afternoon in 1987" from May 18, 2019.

Photo Credit:  Paul Anderson

Willys Aero Saga: An Afterlife in Rio

In the first few years after World War II, Willys Overland, which had produced many of the Jeeps which helped turn the tide of war*, was searching for another vehicle which would have enough appeal to take the place of government orders for the Jeep. They introduced an all-steel station wagon with Jeep-like styling in 1946, and the Jeepster convertible in 1948.  The wagon was a modest success, and continued to be produced until 1964, ten years after Willys Overland merged with Kaiser.  The Jeepster was not a great hit, and was discontinued after the 1950 model year. Some suggested that the Jeepster may have reminded returning GIs too much of the wartime Jeep...

Willys identified a market need for a practical, efficient car that would plug the yawning gap between the tiny Crosley and the "full-size" cars from the Big Three.  Nash would introduce its Rambler in 1950 and would soon add a wagon and sedan to the original ragtop.  In 1951, Nash would produce 57,555 of what it would later christen as the compact car. Possibly encouraged by the Nash example, two Packard alumni, engineer Clyde Patton and designer Phil Wright, finished the Willys entry in the field.

It was a predictive effort in many ways. First, there was the unitized body construction, an approach that would be adopted by the Big Three compacts in 1960. The wheelbase was a tidy 108 inches, 8 inches longer than the Rambler and also echoed by the later Valiant, Falcon and Corvair.  Even the engines were interesting; Willys offered new F-head versions of their inline 6 and 4. This head design, also called Inlet Over Exhaust and similar to a design used by Rover as well as Rolls Royce, positioned intake valves in the head and exhaust valves at the side, permitting larger intake valves than the previous flathead design, and more efficient combustion. Willys called their F-head the Hurricane. Owing to the light weight of the Aero, it had, early in its career anyway, the best power to weight ratio of any American car. 

By 1953 Willys made both two and four-door sedans, as well as a pillarless two-door hardtop, and over its production run offered various trim options from the Ace (the top of the line) to the Wing, and also a Lark, Eagle and Falcon.  Obviously, other manufacturers were aware of the pioneering Willys, even when it came to naming their cars. This two-tone green sedan is a 1953 Aero Ace...

The shape of the roof and glass area anticipates the Volvo 122 (Amazon) from the late Fifties. The fins were a bit less tentative than the bumps on early Fifties Caddies, but nothing like the ones that Virgil Exner would release on Chrysler's '57 Forward Look.

Willys sold over 42,000 of its Aero in 1953, bettering the first year by over 10,000 cars. The model's future was cut short, however, by the 1954 merger between Willys and struggling Kaiser, perhaps prompted by Henry Kaiser's interest in the Jeep line and related government contracts...

The '54 model offered few external changes beyond the chrome headlight hoods shown above, and an extra engine option. After the possibly unwise merger with Kaiser, Willys offered the bigger, but less efficient, Continental six from the Kaiser line in the Aero. Kaiser, on the other hand, offered the F-head Willys engine in its fiberglass-bodied Darrin 2-seater. The Kaiser-Willys combine restyled the car for 1955, with a wider grille and zigzag trim typical for the period.  The two-door hardtop station wagon sketched out by the design staff might have been a better choice. In any case, the firm wound down production after '55, along with the larger Kaiser, after making nearly 6,600 of the final Aero model shown below.

After over 91,000 had been sold in the US, the compact Willys found new life south of the border in 1960, when Kaiser Willys began producing the original design in Brazil.  The Aero 2600, as it was called, looked mostly like the '55 shown above until a clever 1961 restyling by Brooks Stevens, who also redesigned the Studebaker Hawk for 1962 (with similar T-Bird inspired roofline) and the Studebaker Lark line from 1962 through 1964. The Willys redesign went into production in 1963 and was a success, and the car stayed in production until 1971.  

That coincided with the first seven years of the military junta that took over in 1964.  You probably didn't want one of these (usually in black) to show up outside your house in the wee hours of  the morning during that period...unless it happened to be your car.  There was also a limousine version, shown below, which was mostly reserved for Brazilian officialdom and business leaders. Of all the independent US car manufacturers, Willys had perhaps the most enduring product lines. After all, the Jeep wagon anticipated the modern SUV (Kaiser's 1963 ohc Jeep Wagoneer, also designed by Brooks Stevens, refined the idea), and Jeeps kept Kaiser's vehicle production lines busy through 1969, after which American Motors took over...until 1987, when Chrysler purchased the AMC car operation, including Eagle (remember that?) and Jeep. Eagle lasted only a short while, but the familiar Jeep face is still easily recognized in Chrysler showrooms and on the road.

Postscript:  Meanwhile, several vintage Willys Overland vehicles are in use in Boulder, Colorado, where the Jeepster and pristine '53 Aero Ace were spotted, along with the well-loved Aero below which is still in regular use by a lady almost a quarter century older than the car...

*Footnote:  The Jeep design was a product of Pennsylvania's American Bantam Company (American Austin until 1934) which produced an American version of the British Austin Seven from 1930 to '41. Owing to concerns about Bantam's production capacity, the US Government reopened the contract after Bantam had made nearly 2,700 of the first Jeeps, and production was divided between Willys and Ford, while Bantam produced the T-3 trailer for Jeeps.

Photo Credits:  
Top & 2nd (Jeepster):  the author
3rd: Willys Overland
4th thru 6th from top:  the author 
7th:  Willys Overland
8th: howstuffworks.com
9th & 10th: wikimedia
11th: Willys Overland do Brasil SA
12th: flickr.com
Bottom:  Isaac Stokes.  Special thanks to Isaac for finding a shot from our months-ago dog
walk, and for asking his loyal retriever to provide a bit of scale.