Word: k-f
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...improvised theater in an old army hangar at Willow Run, Kaiser-Frazer dealers gathered to see their company's new models. The dealers were gloomy: their share of U.S. auto sales had slumped from an early postwar 5½% to 1%; they knew that K-F had staked its entire future on the new models, pledging all its assets for the $44 million RFC loan which made the new line possible...
...what raised the roof was K-F's new, still unnamed low-priced car. It is a five-passenger two-door sedan which President Edgar Kaiser hopes to sell at around $1.175 f.o.b. Willow Run-$250 cheaper than the more luxurious two-door Ford or Chevrolet. At the sight of it, Midwest dealers swarmed across the stand, lifted the 2,400-lb. car waist-high and carried it around the room...
This week, when K-F showed its new models at Chicago's Auto Show, the public got its first chance to see the low-priced car. Its 100-in. wheelbase is more than a foot shorter than a Ford is, and its design combines something of Ford and Studebaker, and the upswept rear fenders of Cadillac. Inside, it is stripped of everything but essentials (no radio, clock or chromium trim). For additional economy, the body's top and rear are stamped all in one piece, with no rear trunk. Instead, the luggage space is behind the rear seat...
With the slick new models, the weakness of the company was not in the cars but in the men to sell them. K-F's dealer organization, never first-rate, was in poor shape. Its 4,600 agencies had melted to 3,200, and hardly half of the survivors seemed to know how to sell. Edgar Kaiser had to find a way to pep up his dealers to match his cars...
Record Six Months? Among the independents, Packard kept up with the price-trimming parade by lopping $50 off the price of its Ultramatic automatic drive, bringing it down to $175. And last week, Henry & Edgar Kaiser summoned K-F dealers and distributors to Willow Run to let them see their new models with an automatic shift (Hydra-Matic, purchased from G.M.) and K-F's new lower-priced, i oo-inch-wheelbase car. It hopes to get the small car into production by summer. Another new arrival: automatic transmission on the Studebaker, due sometime after April...