The car offered here has rarity going for it, and not a whole lot else. It’s a 1951 Frazer Manhattan, and it’s completely derelict east of Wausau, Wisconsin, on Facebook Marketplace. On the upside, the seller is only asking $1,000 or best offer. Admittedly, the seller doesn’t know much about the car. As they put it, “I haven’t messed with it at all”, but the previous custodian “had it running and moving on spray.” Presumably, that means a spritz of fuel or starter fluid into the carburetor. The deal includes a “spare locked-up engine,” new rocker panels (very much needed), and some other miscellaneous parts.
The title is long gone. In the old days, we’d have called this a parts car, but today every old wreck is deemed to be restorable. The problem is this car needs absolutely everything, and even when fixed up it wouldn’t be worth much—mid-50s American four-door sedans, especially if they’re not Chevy Belairs, are at the bottom of the trough at the moment.
The road is visible through the driver’s floorboards, and the aforementioned rockers are totally gone. The tires are flat. Oddly enough, many body panels don’t look too bad, and the front and rear chrome—probably impossible to find—appears salvageable. The glass is there, and I see one hubcap.
This Kaiser-Frazer buggy’s history is a bit complicated. One positive is that Howard “Dutch” Darrin styled it, famous for his work on custom Packards for the stars. And it won a design award. The Fraser debuted in June of 1946 as a new four-door sedan at a time when few new cars with postwar styling were available.
The bodyshell was very similar to that of the slightly cheaper Kaiser. Under the hood for 1951 was the 115-horsepower Continental Red Seal “Supersonic” L-head six with 226 cubic-inch displacement—very similar to the upper-level Chrysler Slant Six.
The Frazer Manhattan Series F47C was the luxury model, introduced in 1947 and costing $500 more than a Frazer F-47. The “Manhattan” name adds a touch of sophistication, no? Frazer had a whopping 1.5 percent of the American car market in 1948.
In ’51, you could get a Frazer as a four-door convertible (ever seen one?), a hardtop sedan, and the Vagabond, which had an early hatchback. This one is apparently a hardtop sedan. 1951 was the last year for the Frazer nameplate; after that it was all Kaisers. The marque went out with a bang. The public liked the ‘51s, and 50,000 orders were placed, but by then Joseph W. Frazer had left the company, and it was too late.
So if you owned this car, you could probably get it running with all new fuel lines and a new gas tank. But you probably wouldn’t want to move it, for fear it would just fall apart. You’d immediately have to begin an expensive rotisserie frame restoration. And then you could work on the disgustingly bad interior, which at least retains its seat frames. A guess is that $40,000 would get this car into respectable shape. But Classic.com has records for only one recent sale of the Frazer Manhattan, and it sold for $33,600. That was a fully restored convertible, worth vastly more than this bread-and-butter sedan. Of course, if you were restoring one of those convertibles, this vehicle would be a treasure trove. So we’re back to a parts car.
Leave A Comment