Kaiser-Darrin KF-161: slide and prejudice

By Martin Buckley

| 20 Jun 2024

Classic & Sports Car – Kaiser-Darrin KF-161: slide and prejudice

If you consider that between the end of WW2 and the introduction of the Corvette in 1953 there are thought to have been 50 low-volume American sports cars in production, then the Kaiser-Darrin counts as one of the more credible ‘mainstream’ attempts.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 was a one-year-only glamour boat, built to the tune of 435 examples.

Enough, in other words, to make it a rarity with a certain recognition factor, rather than a vanishingly scarce oddity such as the Edwards America, the Glasspar G2 or the one-off, irony-free zone that was the Gaylord.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161’s party piece was its sliding doors, which had a tendency to stick, or even open, of their own accord

With its three-position ‘landau’ top and range of jaunty colour options (Pine-Tint Green, red, yellow and Champagne White), the Darrin had a lot of female admirers and sold mostly to wealthy West Coast buyers who were best able to appreciate its open-topped charms, laid-back character and party-trick doors.

The fact that the hood leaked and was a long-winded fiddle to erect made the car even more suited to the Californian environment.

Freewheeling Hollywood stylist Howard ‘Dutch’ Darrin had been smitten with the idea of sliding doors since the 1920s.

The Kaiser-Darrin’s curvy body is made from glassfibre

He made his name creating some of the prettiest Brewster and LeBaron bodywork for ’30s Packards, and even co-directed a coachbuilding enterprise in Paris before patenting his ‘pocket’ door system in 1946.

They didn’t hinge outward, but slid forward, on ball-bearing runners at first, into the bays formed within the giant front wings.

Plenty of vans and a handful of cars have, before and since, used doors that slide rather than hinge, but I can’t think of another one on which the door disappears into the front wing.

The stylish badge on the one-year-only Kaiser-Darrin KF-161

As with the BMW Z1 some 40 years later (whose doors dropped into the sills), the ability to drive around with one – or both – of the doors stored out of sight doubtless tickled Kaiser-Darrin owners in the novelty-hungry early 1950s.

Problems with runners that either got stuck or allowed the doors to slide open on hills must have made that novelty short-lived, although earnest attempts were made to improve the sliding mechanism.

Ingress and exit – surely a minimum requirement of a car door – was not all that easy even when they worked properly.

‘Like the first six-cylinder Corvettes, the Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 should have been a good way of building up showroom traffic’

The functionally dubious pocket doors were both the Darrin’s claim to fame and perhaps its worst feature.

They were, at least, a truly unique element of a car that promised – if you only road-tested the specification crib-sheet – to be underwhelming on the open highway.

A low-revving Willys F-head straight-six with a three-speed gearbox did not speak of thrilling performance: it managed 95mph on 90bhp and 0-60mph in a yawning 15 secs.

This example came from a museum in Missouri

Neither did the fact that the two-seater was based on the Kaiser Henry J, a ‘working man’s’ utility car with all the sex appeal of a bus shelter: under a different badge it even suffered the indignity of being sold through the Sears catalogue, alongside vests, clock radios and ladies’ girdles.

In fairness, the baby Kaiser drove better than it looked (not difficult, admittedly), but it misjudged the American appetite for budget motoring in an age when fuel was cheap and domestic cars were getting bigger, not smaller.

Its engine proved resistant to the performance upgrades required to give Darrin’s roadster respectable urge (production models would get a stronger, 2.6-litre straight-six built by Continental for the Willys Aero saloon), but the Kaiser’s coil-spring-and-wishbone front suspension was adequate at the very least and the drum brakes better than most.

Just 435 Kaiser-Darrin KF-161s were built during a one-year production run

Darrin, a design consultant to Kaiser, saw the potential and created the roadster body in clay over the Henry J chassis in his own time.

He invited Henry Kaiser to Santa Monica to see the running prototype, which had been built by Bill Tritt of boatmaker Glasspar, early 1952.

The tycoon was not best pleased with the idea of a sports car bearing his name.

He had already torn Darrin off a strip or two when his new – and much younger – wife piped up: Mrs Kaiser loved the car, thus causing her husband to reconsider and give the project his blessing.

The KF-161’s tail-lights were from the Kaiser Manhattan

Mr Kaiser would live to regret the decision, but had much bigger fish to fry because his motor-mogul dreams were already crumbling around him.

The losses incurred on this sports car project are thought to have been more than $10,000,000.

Even Henry J Kaiser, rarely on the wrong end of a deal, couldn’t afford to drop that kind of money on a whim; it has been suggested that each car cost $25,000 to build.

The last official Kaiser-Darrins – billed as ‘America’s newest and finest sports car’ – were completed in August 1954.

Leather seats were an option in this classic car, but the Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 came with tinted glass as standard

When a snowstorm destroyed the Michigan special-projects factory in which they were built, Kaiser saw a chance to draw a line under the affair: he sold the last 50 unfinished bodies to Darrin, who built them up with supercharged engines and retailed the cars via his own LA showroom.

Six of these are believed to have been fitted with Cadillac overhead-valve V8s, giving the 2200lb Darrin 140mph potential.

Kaiser was a house- and shipbuilding tycoon with huge drive and an all-American ‘can do’ attitude who, post-war, fancied he could break the stranglehold of America’s Big Three in the rapidly expanding automotive field, buoyed by government loans and a conveniently vacant former fighter-aircraft factory.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161’s sculpted cockpit has a European flavour

Like many other independents, this formidable character underestimated the public’s taste for ever-bigger, glitzier automotive offerings, usually with V8 engines.

His homely-looking Kaiser saloons, lacking both cylinders and sex appeal, were outgunned by the all-new designs from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in the late ’40s.

It’s just possible he saw the Kaiser-Darrin as a means of adding gloss to the image of the slow-selling Manhattan and Henry J.

Like the first six-cylinder Corvettes, it should have been a good way of building up showroom traffic.

The chrome bumper underpins the KF-161’s elegant rear

The Kaiser-Darrin has several claims to fame beyond those doors, chief among them being the use of glassfibre-reinforced plastic for its body.

It was built in seven sections (initially to a good standard by Glasspar) and would have beaten the Corvette into production with this new, cheap-to-tool-up-for wonder-material had the project not been delayed by technical difficulties with the body moulds, as well as legislative issues.

Dutch Darrin’s bumperless 1952 prototype – differing from the production model by way of its split windscreen, column change, wire wheels and single passenger-side exhaust – fell victim to new rules on headlight height that, along with problems sourcing a suitable engine, delayed deliveries until January 1954.

‘The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 is a longer, wider vehicle than it looks in pictures, with a handsome rear end that is somewhat redolent of a Mercedes-Benz 190SL’

By that time much of the goodwill and momentum the first six prototypes had generated at its LA Motorama and New York show appearances had been squandered.

Even if it had reached production sooner, its high price would have sealed the Kaiser’s fate.

At $3668 the Kaiser-Darrin KF-161, complete with seatbelts as standard, cost $145 more than a Corvette, or about the same price as one of the lesser species of Cadillac or Lincoln.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 is an incongruous sight on Yorkshire roads, but it’s a rare spot anywhere

Leather seats, bolt-on wire wheels and a sleek hardtop were on the short options list, but standard luxury features such as tinted glass, Perspex sidescreens, a white steering wheel, a cigar lighter and whitewall tyres sweetened the deal for those who could live with the unusual styling and the lack of urge.

Critics either loved or loathed the bizarre soapdish ‘grille’, while Darrin declared himself unhappy with the changes made to his front wing line.

More of a problem was the Jaguar XK120, which for an extra $400 trounced the eccentric Kaiser on all fronts, as did the much cheaper MG and Triumph TR competition.

This Kaiser-Darrin’s owner restored its white steering wheel

Bill Smith of Mexborough has had a lifelong fascination with American cars.

Having owned a Chevy Corvair, Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, Dodge Business Coupe and many others over the years, he was in the mood for something different when he went looking for a Kaiser-Darrin.

“I first saw one in an encyclopaedia of American cars in the 1970s,” he says. “The shape just grabbed me.”

Values have risen since then, but Bill, a former coachbuilder and musician, and the owner of an American diner, was in a position to buy a really good one, having done his time with restoration projects.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161’s indicators follow the grille’s lead, in styling terms

“I Googled it and five came up, including this one in a museum in Missouri,” he says.

Having missed out on a rare factory-black car, Bill did the deal on the Missouri Darrin in June 2021.

“It had been unused since 2018 so there was a bit of recommissioning to do,” he continues. “I’ve just restored the steering wheel.”

This car, sold new in Pennsylvania, was from a quarter of the way through the Kaiser-Darrin production run.

The Willys F-head ‘six’ makes 90bhp

It was used until 1967 by its first owner and put back on the road in 1984 by its second.

Various mechanical work was done in the early 2000s before it was acquired by the museum in 2018.

Bill is realistic about its shortcomings, particularly the fiddly hood, with its easily misted-up sidescreens.

But he loves the Darrin and is happy to drive it, living with the poor forward vision – you see mostly bonnet rather than road through the windscreen – and tricky walk-in entry through the narrow door opening.

They have only jammed once, and were easily sorted with a squirt of WD40.

Outright pace isn’t the point of this classic Kaiser-Darrin

It is a longer, wider vehicle than it looks in pictures, with a handsome rear end that is somewhat redolent of a Mercedes-Benz 190SL and incorporates the big tail-light clusters from the Kaiser Manhattan.

A handle in the long, shallow boot pops the cover for the hood, while under the lengthy bonnet lurks the Willys straight-six, with its lonely Carter carburettor and John Deere-style green cylinder block.

There is a spacious feel and a European look to the cabin, in which the instruments are grouped together in a big, Austin-Healey-like display – that includes a tachometer – rather than sprawling across the dashboard as in the prototype; the remainder of the fascia is neatly padded.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161 majors on glamour

The seats are finished in Pine Crush vinyl to match the body, but only the driver’s seat adjusts, and the brake and clutch pedals are too closely spaced for wide feet.

Like most F-head ‘sixes’, this one is smooth and friendly sounding while making sufficient torque to keep progress brisk if not electrifying.

The redline is a modest 4500rpm, but 3000rpm is usually enough, with plenty of urge to spare for taking on hills in top or even overdrive that allows you to kickdown like an automatic into direct drive for overtaking (Bill keeps the Borg-Warner unit permanently engaged by way of a chrome T-handle under the dashboard).

Whitewall tyres came as standard, as befits the Kaiser-Darrin KF-161’s luxury billing

The nifty-looking gearlever appears promisingly sporty but has long movements and cannot be rushed, particularly into second; in practice, you don’t need to use it very often.

With its light and surprisingly direct steering, the low-built, wide-track Kaiser-Darrin is not a handful to drive.

It lopes along benignly on supple springs that manage to avoid teasing too many squeaks out of the bodyshell, while allowing it to corner neatly with the minimum of tyre squeal and understeer.

The Kaiser-Darrin KF-161’s soapdish ‘grille’ is a talking point

It is not a car for aggressive, intemperate drivers, but is instead a gentle soul that merely seeks to help its owner cut a sporting dash at the country club.

Love them or loathe them, the Kaiser-Darrin’s looks were – and remain today – a talking point that makes any outing an event in a car that still gathers crowds, and queries, like almost nothing else.

Images: Max Edleston

Factfile

Kaiser-Darrin KF-161

Sold/number built 1954/435
Construction steel chassis, glassfibre body
Engine all-iron, sidevalve, F-head 2638cc straight-six, single Carter YF carburettor
Max power 90bhp @ 4200rpm
Max torque 135lb ft @ 1600rpm
Transmission three-speed manual with overdrive, RWD
Suspension: front independent, by wishbones, coil springs rear live axle, semi-elliptic leaf springs, telescopic dampers f/r
Steering worm and peg
Brakes drums
Length 15ft 4in (4674mm)
Width 5ft 7½in (1716mm)
Height 4ft 2¾in (1291mm)
Wheelbase 8ft 4in (2540mm)
Weight 2200lb (998kg)
Mpg 27-30
0-60mph 15 secs
Top speed 95mph
Price new $3668
Price now $100,000*