When the premium Frazer brand at Kaiser-Frazer was killed off for 1952, the Manhattan name was shifted over to the Kaiser line to survive for a few more years.

Hindsight is typically 20/20, but historians agree that Kaiser Frazer was probably doomed from the start, mainly by its shortage of operating capital. The upstart automaker never acquired the resources, financial and otherwise, to advance and thrive in the marketplace. As the company trimmed operations to reduce costs and K-F’s premium Frazer brand was discontinued after 1951, the Manhattan name was shifted over to the surviving Kaiser line. There it became the new top trim level, supplanting the Kaiser Deluxe.

Back when Kaiser-Frazer was taking shape at the end of World War II, there were ambitious plans for an advanced front-wheel drive car, but when the production vehicles arrived in MY 1947, they were totally conventional in their engineering. The 1952 Kaisers were no different in that regard, Manhattan included, with a very standard ladder-frame chassis mated to an L-head six-cylinder engine that originally came from Continental.

Trouble was there were no funds to develop the overhead-valve V8 and automatic transmission the market then demanded. K-F partially filled the product gap with Hydra-Matic transmissions from General Motors, but a similar plan to acquire Rocket V8 engines from Oldsmobile never gelled. Kaiser would later (1954) offer the McCulloch supercharger on the old L-head six in an attempt to keep up with the V8s, but car buyers were largely unconvinced.

One area where the Manhattan was more competitive was in styling, thanks to a complete restyling job for Kaiser the year before by Howard Darrin and Duncan McRae that K-F called “Anatomic Design.” The three trim levels for ’52 were Virginian (actually a 1951 carryover to clear leftover inventories), the Deluxe, and the Manhattan at the top of the line. The Manhattan is easily distinguished from the Deluxe at almost any distance by its wide rocker moldings in bright metal.

The Manhattan’s interior appointments were as fine as any in its class, featuring distinctive color and fabric combinations in both cloth and vinyl. The lower-priced Deluxe was noticeably more subdued. Kaiser aggressively worked the safety angle in its selling story in those days, touting “the safest front seat in the industry!” The claim was based on minor design details. Another K-F boast, “Now . . .the world’s most advanced car,” would be tough to justify on any basis. In the ’50s, it was just another day in the lives of the automotive ad writers.

Eliminating the Frazer brand and moving the Manhattan name over to Kaiser did little (okay, nothing) to arrest the automaker’s rapidly declining fortunes. To maintain a toehold in the auto industry, in April of 1953 Kaiser-Frazer acquired Willys-Overland and combined the two automakers as Willys Motors, Inc. Jeeps then became the company’s core products as the Kaiser passenger car operations were wound down. Only a few hundred Manhattans were delivered in the USA in 1955 before the tooling was shipped off to Industrias Kaiser Argentina, where the Kaiser Manhattan became the 1958-62 Kaiser Carabela.