The plastic cars from Kaiser
06/25/2014
Henry Kaiser loved new ideas and solutions and he motivated his engineers to always start from scratch. So it was no wonder that the Kaiser car company was an early adopter of plastic as a material for car bodies.
As early as 1943, just three years after Ford had presented the first ever plastic prototype, the first bodies made of GRP were created and in 1945 a working prototype of a two-seater saloon with a plastic body (pictured above) was presented. Henry Kaiser hoped to bring an affordable everyday car similar to a Ford Model A onto the market on this basis. However, economic reasons forced Kaiser into a much more conventional direction.
Nevertheless, Kaiser then announced America's first series-produced plastic sports car in 1952. This was one year earlier than General Motors with the Corvette. But while the Chevrolet plastic flounder was already in series production in 1953, it was almost a year before customers were able to buy the Kaiser-Darrin with the innovative sliding doors . After just 435 units, however, production of this originally styled car was discontinued. This marked the end of the plastic era at Kaiser.
