Henry J

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry J in Japan
Henry J model car
The Allstate A-230 (1952) was a similar, but more simply equipped, model of the Henry J Four that was sold at Sears-Roebuck .

Henry J was an American car brand manufactured by Kaiser-Frazer Corporation and named after one of its owners, Henry J. Kaiser . Series production of vehicles with six-cylinder engines began in July 1950 and four-cylinder vehicles in early May 1950. On September 28, 1950, the model was officially presented.

description

The car was the brainchild of Henry J. Kaiser, who wanted to increase the sales of his automobile company by bringing out a car that was cheap to manufacture and therefore affordable for the average American, like Henry Ford 's Model T before World War I. . The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation had been granted a government loan for the construction of the vehicle in 1949, which was subject to conditions: the price of the vehicle, including taxes and delivery fee, could not exceed US $ 1,300; it had to be delivered by September 30, 1950 at the latest, have space for at least five adults and be able to reach a continuous speed of at least 50 mph (80 km / h).

In order to achieve this, the Henry J was constructed from as few parts as possible and had few special equipment. To save costs, early copies did not have a trunk lid; the owners could only get to the trunk by folding down the rear seat back. Another cost-saving measure was the design of the car as a two-door sedan with fixed rear side windows. The glove compartment , armrests, the sun visor on the right and the ventilation system were also missing in the basic equipment .

The engine of the Henry J had four cylinders and delivered 68 SAE-PS (51 kW); later versions were also available with an 80 SAE HP (60 kW) six-cylinder engine. The engines were supplied by Willys-Overland , they had vertical valves, whereby the four-cylinder came from the Jeep CJ-3 with only a few changes (the basic engine can be swapped between the two models).

From 1952 Kaiser Motors sold the Henry J via Sears-Roebuck under the name Allstate . The Allstate was very similar to the Henry J, the only differences were in the grille, the company logo, the hubcaps, the interior, the tires (brand: Allstate) and the battery. After two years of disappointing sales, Sears-Roebuck stopped selling. The car was also available in Japan from 1951 to 1954 under license from East Japan Heavy Industries , part of the Mitsubishi group.

The Henry J proved to be a disappointment for Kaiser Motors. The Henry J was cheap, but for a few dollars more you could buy a Chevrolet One-Fifty that had a trunk lid and hinged rear side windows. The Chevrolet , Ford, and other cheap competing models were also bigger and had more interior space. From 1951, Kaiser-Frazer offered the trunk lid, along with a few other equipment details, as an optional extra, with advertising still aimed at the vehicle's low operating costs, at a time when a gallon of gasoline was only 27 cents. Sales continued to decline from year to year. Henry J. Kaiser wanted to make a profit with this car through high production figures, but the sluggish sales prevented that.

The compact Rambler from Nash sold significantly better, it was marketed as a well-equipped convertible sedan and as a practical small station wagon . The Henry J was a very simply equipped two-door sedan; the customers could very well distinguish between "inexpensive" and "cheap" and Henry J soon had a bad name for them.

After the acquisition of Willys-Overland in the spring of 1953, the management of Kaiser Motors decided to discontinue production of the Henry J at the end of the 1953 model year. The attempts to sell the remaining cars in 1953 failed. So they made these vehicles into 1954 models until all of the cars scattered around the Willow Run factory were sold.

The chassis of the Henry J was also used as the basis for the Kaiser KFD-161 Darrin sports car .

literature

Web links

Commons : Henry J  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files