The company was founded on July 25, 1945 and in 1946 K-F displayed prototypes of their two new cars at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Kaiser was of an advanced front wheel drive design while the Frazer was an upscale conventional rear wheel drive car. The production costs and time available prevented the front wheel drive design from seeing production so the new 1947 Kaiser and Frazer shared bodies and powertrains. Being some of the first newly designed cars to hit the market while the "Big Three" were still marketing their pre-war designs, the Kaisers and Frazers made quite an exciting entrance. Kaiser and Frazer would continue to share bodies and engines through 1950 with different exterior and interior trimming.

Henry Kaiser had no automotive marketing experience while Joseph Frazer did, having been president of the Graham-Paige Corporation prior to WWII. Henry Kaiser believed in pressing on in the face of adversity; Joseph Frazer was more pragmatic. As the market for K-F products slowed in 1949 Kaiser pushed for more production creating an oversupply of cars that took until mid-1950 to sell. Kaiser and Frazer continued at odds until Frazer left the company in 1951 and the car with the Frazer nameplate was dropped at the end of a short 10,000 unit production run. In 1952 the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation was renamed Kaiser Motors Corporation and continued building passenger cars until 1955.

In 1953 Kaiser bought the ailing Willys-Overland company for US$63,381,175 and merged the Kaiser and Willys operations together under the name Willys Motors. The decision was then made to exit the passenger car market which was accomplished at the end of the 1955 model year. By 1956 Willys Motors was building only utility vehicles, many for export, and was turning a healthy profit. In 1962 the company was renamed the Kaiser Jeep Corporation.

In 1970 the Kaiser Jeep Corporation was sold to to American Motors Corporation who continued to manufacture Jeep vehicles until AMC was purchased by Chrysler in 1987 for $360 million. Chrysler wanted the Jeep vehicle line and had estimated that for them to create a similar competing product and build a reputation to match would have cost in excess of $1 billion.

Production of Kaiser Frazer models was centered at Willow Run, Michigan. Willow Run, the largest building in the world at that time, was built by the U.S. government just prior to World War II for Henry Ford to build B24 Liberator bombers for the European war effort and then later for the USA war effort. Once the war concluded Ford had no interest in the facility which then set the War Assets Administration off looking someone to lease or buy the building. When K-F expressed interest the facility, the WAA offered them a very good five-year lease rate, so good K-F couldn’t refuse. K-F also had manufacturing facilities in Jefferson, Michigan, Long Beach, California, Portland, Oregon, Leaside, Ontario, Canada, Haifa, Israel, Kawasaki, Japan, Mexico City, Mexico and Rotterdam, Holland. USA production was concentrated at Toledo, Ohio upon the purchase of Willys-Overland starting in 1953 as the Willow Run facility had been sold to General Motors after GM suffered a disastrous and destructive fire at their Livonia, Michigan Hydramatic plant and needed a facility quickly to resume production.

Source: www.wikipedia.org