Power steering for the Kaiser
05/18/2013
No, this is not about a monarch, but about a car called Kaiser Manhatten. It was fitted with Monroe power steering in 1953. And to prove how effective the power steering was, the car was driven up and down a flight of stairs at an angle for demonstration purposes. Without power steering, the test driver would hardly have been able to hold the steering wheel in his hand.
The Monroe power steering system consisted of 35 parts in 1953. The cost of equipping a new car was estimated at 90 USD, while retrofitting an old car cost around 225 USD. In the 1950s, American customers increasingly asked for power steering. General Motors had also developed such a device and "lent" it to other car manufacturers. European manufacturers, including Bentley and Rolls-Royce, were still supplying most of their cars without power steering.
Incidentally, Kaiser Motors was an American car company that existed from 1946 to 1963.
The picture can of course also be found in the Zwischengas archive.
