First for Frazer

In the cavernous Willow Run plant last week, workmen swarmed around an auto chassis, lifted in the motor, fastened on the wheels and then, finally, bolted on a body. In this handmade fashion, the Frazer, the first car of the new automaking team of Joe Frazer and Henry Kaiser, was turned out. Wider than most cars, and lower, it was Graham-Paige's contribution to the team. In a week, the new Kaiser-Frazer Corp. will turn out its contribution, the Kaiser car, made in the same fashion. Both corporations acquired something even more important, a top production man: Edward J. Hunt, the short, square boss of the Chrysler tank arsenal.

President Joe Frazer lured Hunt away from his job with Chrysler by a reported salary of $45.000 a year. Many automakers envied Hunt the salary, but few envied Mr. Hunt his job: to mass-produce the Frazer and the Kaiser cars.

In Willow Run the last of the Government-owned machines were being moved out only this week. Hunt will have to build up a production staff to install miles of conveyor belts in the bare building, move in acres of machine tools, erect long assembly lines. He has also taken on a job which some auto companies prefer to leave to outsiders, the highly specialized job of making his own bodies. It will be some two months before the huge presses to stamp them out are in the plant. Outside of this, Hunt will have to depend almost entirely on outside suppliers for his parts--motors from Continental Motors Corp., wheels from Kelsey-Hayes Wheel Co., etc.--whereas most other automakers turn out a good share of their parts themselves. Thus, he will be hit doubly hard by the partsmakers strikes now plaguing the industry.

One point in his favor: Willow Run's vast space is an ideal place in which to make cars and tractors, if the assembly lines can be made to tick smoothly. Plump, dapper Joe Frazer, optimistic as usual predicted that the Frazer would start coming off the lines in March, the Kaiser, with a front-wheel drive, by the middle of April. By July 1, he expects Willow Run to be in peak production of 1,500 cars a day.

If this happens, even competitors would be willing to call it a production miracle. But most of them were still skeptical. Nevertheless, they were no longer calling it a shoestring venture. To the $22,000,000 which the Kaiser-Frazer Corp. had raised by a stock issue had been added $8,000,000 of Graham-Paige money, and a $10,000,000 line of credit from the Bank of America, enough to get into production. The corporation has also signed up 206 distributors as a nucleus for its dealer organization.

But in the present seller's market Joe Frazer figures that the big trick is to produce cars. They will probably sell themselves, even though untested, until the market returns to something like normal. Therefore he was negotiating last week for more production facilities, hoped to lease a West Coast plane plant from RFC. And he confidently went ahead with plans to have the first showing of the hand-built models of the Frazer and Kaiser in Manhattan Jan. 20.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.