The Kaiser: A Story from the Archives

When I was thirteen, my family and I made a pilgrimage to my great uncle’s estate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the annual family reunion. To this day, I don’t remember what the exterior of that house looked like; it must not have been all that exciting, or maybe it was just eclipsed by the house’s interior.
The estate was an "interesting" building internally, and "interesting" wasn’t always flattering. The interior seemed to have been designed by a person trapped in the 60's. If one could get past the yellow shag carpet, one might have thought the house "eclectic" but could not miss the floral wallpaper, the colors blending over the years into something resembling mud. The living room looked like the 60's had exploded outward with the force of an atomic bomb; a great lime green sofa dominated the room, facing a 1960’s television set surrounded by winged chairs of a terrible floral pattern. The kitchen featured the trademark pastel appliances that should not be confused with the new “retro” ones from Sears. The kitchen also sported a lovely, blue, Formica table ringed with four green cushioned chairs. In every room was the smell of old wood and moth balls.
Amid its ugliness however, the house contained several beauties. My great uncle, the artist of the family, had placed outside enormous sculptures of iron and steel. A great iron dragon stood in the center of the estate, surrounded by other works of twisting steel, artfully woven together to form great spires towards the heavens.
Reigning in the garage, untouched and unseen by the family for many years, sat the greatest beauty of all, ageless by all standards and evidence of a more sophisticated era. My father and I understood the beauty of my uncle’s car. The car was the color of fresh crème, a two door coupe, with rather peculiar pocket doors, and wine colored leather interior; it stood erect against the sands of time that had decimated the rest of the house. Few knew that it was in fact a 1954 Kaiser Darrin, perhaps one of a hundred still in existence. The man who engineered it, was, like my great uncle, an "art person."
Howard "Dutch" Darrin was a designer and friend of the automobile manufacturer Henry Kaiser. Darrin had always been infatuated with the idea of constructing a fiberglass sports car. Darrin, who worked for Kaiser, poured his own money into a design project unbeknownst to Kaiser. Darrin's project would eventually produce the Kaiser Darrin. Kaiser initially refused to manufacturer the Darrin, believing the car to be impractical, but, pressured by his wife, he eventually consented and began the production of 450 Kaiser Darrins. Before the order could be completed, however, the company collapsed, and the first fifty Darrins were sentenced to the scrap heap. Darrin was enraged and purchased the cars from the company himself, taking them to his warehouse in Santa Monica. After several years and many attempts to integrate the Kaiser Darrin into the automotive industry, Darrin sold the cars.
While I do not know how my uncle came to own the car, I continue to regard it as a piece of history, illustrating perfectly that our world changes as we do. Unfortunately, we do not have such cars anymore: cars artfully crafted from the blood and toil of mankind's labor. We just have the Honda or the Hummer.