It was a cloudy afternoon and we were driving along the back side of Barnagat Light in New Jersey when my wife spotted this car. I took the quick shot above just in case, then we followed the car for less than a mile. The owner pulled into his driveway and then began to back into his garage. Wait, I called as I approached, camera in hand.
Roger Halbing is the owner and a great guy to talk to about Kaiser motorcars. His is a very rare 1954 Kaiser Manhattan. Essentially, this was the last year the car was manufactured in this country. Kaiser did produce some 1955s but they were nearly identical to this 1954.
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Click on pictures to Z O O M in.
Note the padded dashboard. This was a key feature of this car line.
When Kaiser stopped its run of Kaiser motorcars in 1955, it moved production to Argentina. There production continued for a few years after that.
My father had a 1951 Kaiser. It was our families first new car. In fact, my parents flew to Detroit to pick up the car in 1950. I was about six years old but I remember this clearly. My father had extreme pain in his leg and difficulties walking and shortly after we purchased the car we (mother, father, 3 kids) drove to Hot Springs Arkansas from Jersey City New Jersey where my father took special baths to ease the pain. We stayed about sis weeks and he never had trouble walking again. The other thing I recall is that the car overheated on the trip many, many times. My mother was upset. We purchased a new car and still had reliability problems. We sold the car in about 1955.
© Fred Winograd copyright 2009
