Junkyard Find: 1951 Frazer

by Murilee Martin

Published: December 9th, 2012

While I was photographing a burned-up ’61 Caddy hearse and buying a ’41 Plymouth Special Deluxe sedan at the Brain-Melting Colorado Junkyard last week, I stopped to admire some of the many Kaiser-Frazer products scattered around the many acres of old iron. You’ll need to drop everything and read Ate Up With Motor‘s excellent history of Kaiser-Frazer before continuing with today’s Junkyard Find, so go do that right now.

The 1951 Frazer was just a use-up-the-leftover-Frazer-parts deal, done after Henry J. Kaiser forced Joe Frazer out of company management. A quickie facelift was thrown onto the ’50 Frazer’s snout, but otherwise this car is identical to the 1950 Frazer.

Only about 10,000 ’51 Frazers were sold, making this an extremely rare car today. Valuable? Probably not, but still cool for its historical value.

I seriously considered buying a Frazer instead of the ’41 Plymouth, but these cars are just so heavy that I’d need to use tougher (i.e., more expensive) running gear to get the performance I wanted.

Check out that horn ring!

The Brain-Melting Colorado Yard has so many Frazers (the hood ornament from a late-40s Frazer is pictured here) that it may one day serve as the reservoir for all the competitors in a future Spec Frazer race series. Hey, if we can have Spec Dynasty, why not Spec Frazer?

#1950s #1951 #1951Frazer #Colorado #DownOnTheJunkyard #Frazer #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #Kaiser-Frazer

Murilee Martin

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.

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6 of 26 comments

Moparman426W on Dec 10, 2012

I'm not into oddball cars like this for the most part, with the exception being some Nash cars and trucks, and Studebaker trucks. The Frazer is a part of our automotive heritage, though, and I hope the traitor that owns that junkyard doesn't ship it overseas.

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- Ranwhenparked on Dec 10, 2012
  
  A traitor? For selling his own property to people that want to buy it and restore it? There's plenty of other Frazers out there for Americans that want them, and if you care so much about keeping this "heritage" from going overseas, you're more than welcome to go buy it yourself. If not, Kronor talk, and you know what walks.
  
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- Moparman426W on Dec 11, 2012
  
  @ranwhenparked No, I have no interest in this type of car, but there are plenty of others here in the US that would. Those of us in the car hobby frown on people that sell old American iron to people overseas because those cars are a part of our automotive history. They were designed and built here in the US and were bought and enjoyed here in the US, cruised our highways. And when one is shipped far away to another country never to be seen again that is one more piece of automotive history lost, most likely for good. I wouldn't expect someone like yourself to understand, and I expected a response like yours. It's funny how the owner of the junkyard seems to want to keep it a secret from most people, I wonder what's up with that?
  
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- Ranwhenparked on Dec 11, 2012
  
  @ranwhenparked I have no desire to see cars rot away to nothingness while the car hobby gushes over date codes on '69 Camaros. Nobody in this country has ever had any real interest in vintage sedans, except as parts cars for coupes, which doesn't work for a K-F product, since they pretty much only built sedans. The only two choices for this car are a) get shipped overseas for restoration, or b) stay where it is and rust away forever, or get crushed someday when the yard owner passes on and his heirs liquidate the property. Seems to me a true car enthusiast would favor option a. It's not like they're never heard from again. There are plenty of American car enthusiasts that travel overseas to buy rare European cars you can't find here, just like there are a lot of European enthusiasts that come here to sate their desire for vintage American iron. They even come here to by rust free European stuff from California. Stuff gets shipped back and forth all the time. Not a big deal. If some Frazer enthusiast is out to buy the best Manhattan he can possibly find, and the best one in the world comes up for auction in Sweden, he's just a long distance phone call away from bidding on it.
  
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- Moparman426W on Dec 14, 2012
  
  @ranwhenparked The car would certainly sell if it was advertised. There are alot of people out there that are into the almost forgotten brands, primarily older folks, and they wouldn't care about this car being a sedan. There is an "orphan" car show in this area every year, and the turnout is huge. I have no interest in european cars, they are not my cup of tea. I don't notice them and I wouldn't give it a thought if they were all shipped back to their homeland.
  
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Stars9texashockey on Dec 10, 2012

Now I know where Acura got their current beak/shield grill from.

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