Background
He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of James S. Frazer, attorney for the Louisville-Nashville Railroad, and Mary Washington.
He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of James S. Frazer, attorney for the Louisville-Nashville Railroad, and Mary Washington.
After attending the Nashville Day School, Frazer went to the Hotchkiss Academy in Connecticut and then to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, from which he graduated in 1911.
He then sought a position in Detroit as a mechanic's helper at the Packard Motor Car Company, for which his brother was a dealer. He began his career working on the shop floor, but almost from the first Frazer gravitated toward sales.
He took a sales position at Packard's New York City agency, transferring to his brother's dealership in Nashville in 1915.
By 1916, he had his own Saxon Motor dealership in Cleveland, Ohio. Sorely in need of executive talent, General Motors (GM) hired Frazer in 1919. He remained with the company until 1923, serving first in sales.
Ultimately he became treasurer of General Motors Export Division, where he helped form General Motors Acceptance Corporation.
In 1923, GM loaned Frazer to Pierce-Arrow in Buffalo, New York, in order to establish a credit agency for that auto company.
Walter Chrysler, engaged in resurrecting Maxwell-Chalmers Motors Company, hired Frazer to head Maxwell sales, and he stayed on when Chrysler absorbed the company into the Chrysler Corporation in 1925.
As vice-president of the Chrysler sales division and vice-president of the Plymouth Division, Frazer became one of the industry's most prominent executives.
In 1939, he resigned from Chrysler to become president and general manager of Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. , in Toledo, Ohio, makers of lowprice cars. He staved off bankruptcy, increasing sales by 60 percent in his first year there.
When World War II began in Europe, Willys entered the competition to produce a general utility vehicle for the United States Army. Another company, American Bantam, won the contest, but Ford and Willys also built the vehicle, which became the famous Jeep.
As a result of Jeep sales, Willys's sales rose from $9 million to $170 million during the war. Frazer left Willys in 1944 to become president of the Warren City Tank and Boiler Co. , in Ohio, a subsidiary of the Graham-Paige Motor Corp. He reformed the company into Warren City Manufacturing.
Through an exchange of stock, Frazer and his associates became majority owners of Graham-Paige, and Frazer himself became chairman and president.
In 1945, Frazer was introduced to Henry Kaiser, one of the nation's premier industrialists, who was considering entering the automobile business. Graham-Paige was strapped for cash, and Kaiser needed the help of people who understood the industry. The two businessmen quickly agreed to organize the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, to be jointly owned by Henry J. Kaiser Company and Graham-Paige.
They started with $5 million in capital, half contributed by each partner; the sale of Kaiser-Frazer stock fetched another $53 million. The company planned to produce two cars--the Kaiser and the Frazer.
Kaiser knew next to nothing about automobiles, though, and Frazer had never worked in production. In 1941, the last full year of American car production before the war, Graham-Paige had turned out only 544 cars, of an industry total of 3, 779, 600.
Nonetheless they proceeded. With government help, the company purchased the huge Ford Willow Run plant in Michigan, which they planned to transform from a manufacturer of military aircraft to the world's largest automobile plant. The plan was to produce Kaisers at Willow Run and the more expensive Frazers at the Graham-Paige plant.
The Kaiser-Frazer strategy was to come to market as rapidly as possible with a revolutionary car. (The big three auto companies, by contrast, had to convert their military plants and produce virtually the same models they presented in 1941. ) This approach gave Kaiser-Frazer a beachhead from which it could expand rapidly. The initial shipments were made in June 1946, and from the beginning, demand was high.
The company produced fewer than 12, 000 cars in 1946, but in 1947 it turned out 144, 000, making it the industry's fourth-largest carmaker, ahead of such firms as Studebaker, Nash, and Hudson. But with only 4 percent of production, Kaiser-Frazer fell far short of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler.
In 1948, as the manufacture of Kaisers and Frazers increased but as the big three began to come out with flashier vehicles, Kaiser-Frazer Corporation stumbled.
In 1949, production was a mere 58, 000. Undeterred, the company produced two entirely different cars for the 1951 model year.
Long, low, and sleek, the Kaiser Deluxe was one of the most attractive cars of the era. The other car was the Henry J, a four-cylinder that in its design was a decade ahead of its time. Kaiser-Frazer was an industry innovator, bringing out a hatchback sedan and a hard-top long before anyone else. But sales nevertheless remained sluggish. In 1954, only 17, 000 cars were produced.
In 1955, the company's last year of business, production came to under 6, 000. Frazer left the organization in 1953, largely because of his feeling that Kaiser was shunting him aside to take a more active role in management. He spent most of his remaining years as a consultant.
He retired to Newport, Rhod Island, in the early 1960's and died there.
In November 1914, Frazer married Lucille Frost of Chicago; they had one child.