Kaiser Darrin: The unusual American sports car

The Kaiser Darrin weighed only 2175 pounds, over 700 pounds lighter than the similarly fiberglass-bodied Corvette.
Everyone knows the Corvette was the first fiberglass-bodied American sports car, right? Well, it depends on what the definition of "was" is. Kaiser announced its plans before Chevy announced the Vette would feature plastic bodywork. And while the Corvette rolled off the assembly line first, Kaiser had Darrins in dealers, available to the public, when GM was still supplying all Corvettes to friends of the company.

That doesn't mean that Kaiser didn't also put its cars into the hands of influential people. To promote the new Darrin, Kaiser gave them to big rollers of the day. This "pine tint" green Darrin, which belongs to William True, of Hancock, Maryland, was given to the Hearst publishing family. True even has a box of replacement Monroe shocks that Kaiser sent to the Hearsts to upgrade the shocks that came on the car, complete with the shipping label.

The sleek Kaiser Darrin sprung from the pen of Howard "Dutch" Darrin, who wanted to put a body on the chassis of the Henry J that would do that car justice. Darrin was disappointed in the Henry J's final form, so he developed the Kaiser Darrin independently, and presented it to the company when it was finished.

The car employed the Henry J's chassis and gearbox, but substituted the 161-cid, 90-horsepower Nash F-head six-cylinder engine for a Kaiser unit of the same size. The F-head design located the intake valves in overhead configuration, while the exhaust valves were in the block.

The prototype debuted at the 1952 Los Angeles auto show, and the car went into production in January 1954. Unfortunately for the Darrin, '54 was the year Kaiser decided to give up on the car business. Fewer than 500 Darrins were built and about 300 of the cars survive today.

Darrin accurately forecast the market for American sports cars that was quickly exploited by the faster Corvette and Thunderbird, but Kaiser was unable to benefit from demand for such cars. Part of the Darrin's problem was a high price tag of $3,668, which was more than enough to buy a V8 Lincoln or Cadillac.

The Darrin had several unusual features, most obviously its sliding doors. Rather than swinging outward on hinges, the Darrin's doors slid forward on rollers into the front fenders, like pocket doors in a home. The idea didn't work so well in practice because it is very difficult to slip behind the steering wheel through the small door opening.

Other unusual aspects were a folding convertible top that could be opened halfway to create sort of a soft targa roof, and an overdrive for the three-speed manual gearbox that can be set to engage and disengage automatically. The short floor-mounted shifter moves easily through the gears, with shift action little removed from that of a modern Mercedes SLK manual shifter, if no where near a Miata's precision. The dash wouldn't look out of place in one of today's retro-roadsters such as the BMW Z3, with large round tachometer and speedometer mounted directly in front of the driver.

The six-cylinder engine lacks serious motivation compared to today's cars, but was much more powerful than the MGs of the day. Motorsport magazine recorded 0-to-60 times of 13.8 seconds, and that felt about right based on our drive.

Well-restored Darrins trade for between $25,000 and $36,000, according to Jack Mueller of the Kaiser-Frazer Owners Club International. Do-it-yourselfers can find restorable examples for as little as $7,000, he said.

True, who has owned his Darrin nearly 20 years, fell in love with the cars while working at a Ford dealer in the 1950s, when a customer traded one in on a new T-Bird. The restoration of his car took a year, but it was well worth it, earning an AACA Grand National award.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
More From News