We went to a threshing bee in Granite, Iowa, a while back, and saw lots of great old iron. One of the stars of the show for me was this 1949 Kaiser-Fraser sedan.

From the front, it looks a lot like most other cars (and trucks) from the ’40’s, but stroll around to the back…

… and you see that the engineers were maybe a little ahead of their time. The back end opens up to allow it to be used like a pickup. How about that!

But the pièce de résistance had to be the buffalo hood ornament. That thing is awesome. I’ll bet it weighs more than the entire hood on modern cars.

The owner had a blown up copy of a Popular Science article on a stand next to the car.

edit: Talk about coincidences; I snapped these photos last year, and started working on this post a week or two ago. Today, Jalopnik puts up photos of a car with a tailgate that is so like the Kaiser; the Faurecia. And one of the other commenters mentioned the same thing.