Junkyard Find: Horizon Blue 1949 Kaiser Special
Since I’m now shopping for some sort of postwar American sedan for a foolish road-racer project and the ’51 Nash Airflyte in the Brain-Melting Colorado Yard isn’t for sale, I decided to pay more attention to the large selection of Kaiser-Frazer products parked nearby. How about a car with an optional factory color so impressive that the manufacturer installed badges with that color’s name on the fenders?
The Colorado sun and weather isn’t kind to vintage car paint, so the Horizon Blue color is no longer visible. The gold-tone emblems remain, though.
The Kaiser buffalo was one of the better symbols used on American cars.
Here’s an engine that was used in everything from boats to generators to farm equipment to cars built by dozens of manufacturers: the Continental Red Seal 226-cubic-inch flathead six. While Ford, GM, and Chrysler were developing modern overhead-valve V8s and preparing to crush the competition like annoying insects, Kaiser had to stick with this antiquated-but-reliable power plant.
This car is a bit heavy for what I had in mind, so I passed on it. I was, however, tempted to make an offer on this beautifully weathered 1965 license plate.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
A very cool find there MM. I love that glossy sky blue paint that many cars used back in the day, sadly hardly used today though, and if you get a light blue, it's that nondescript light metallic blue that I've never cared too much for. That said, this old Kaiser looks to be fairly complete, though rough and very much sun blasted. Too bad you didn't get much of the interior this time around.
It would be great if you could find a Henry J!