By 1955 it was clear that Willys was not long for the passenger car business, but work continued on potential future models that now exist only in photographs.

On April 28, 1953, Kaiser-Frazer Corporation acquired Willys-Overland in a deal worth around $62.3 million, creating Willys Motors. Neither Kaiser nor Willys were doing very well in the passenger-car market at the time, as both brands were well outside the top 10 in U.S. sales. But the merger gave Henry J. Kaiser, whose mottoes included “Kaisers never retrench,” a new foothold in the auto industry producing Willys’ four-wheel drive Jeep vehicles for a small but reliable market.

As Kaiser and Henry J sales continued to decline, in November of 1953 the giant Kaiser plant in Willow Run, Michigan was sold off to General Motors and manufacturing operations were consolidated at Willys in Toledo. While Kaiser and Willys passenger models were continued in 1954 and 1955, by all appearances Willys Motors was phasing out of the car business. But in the meantime, work continued on developing passenger cars for 1956 and beyond, all apparently based on the existing Willys Aero platform. (See our feature on the ’52-’55 Aero here.)

Reportedly, stylists Buzz Grisinger, Rhys Miller, and Howard “Dutch” Darrin were involved in the project. In the photo above, we can see the unmistakable “Darrin kiss” grille treatment, as seen on the 1954 Kaiser-Darrin sports car. (Darrin called it a “constellation grille.”) Also grafted onto the front end of the Willys hardtop are sculpted wheel openings and a headlamp treatment that resembled the 1954 Kaiser’s, but inverted. As Darrin was quoted in Special Interest Autos in 1970, “The essential body shell remained untouched. And like the Darrin sports car, this proposed car was developed on an extremely tight budget.”

The photo above neatly illustrates how, on the right side, a tail fin and new tail lamp theme were adapted to a production Aero four-door sedan body shell. Intriguingly, this example has a Kaiser script on the right lower deck lid and a Kaiser deck lid handle and emblem, too. This more than suggests that at least some thought was given to marketing the car as both a Willys and/or a Kaiser.

This overhead view of a complete hardtop proposal features a Willys W on the deck lid and extended tail fins to create a longer silhouette. Along with Special Interest Autos, we would call it a handsome effort, though there is no mistaking its Aero origins. No mechanical details were ever disclosed, but we presume the future Willys would be powered by the Kaiser 226 cubic-inch L-head six, which became available on the Aero in 1954.

While none of these proposals (they’re all different, note) ever came to anything in the USA, the Willys Aero did enjoy a second life. By 1958, the production dies and tooling had been sent to Willys-Overland do Brasil, where the car was seen as a better fit for the developing market there. (Chrysler was initially a partner in the venture, reportedly, but soon backed out.) The Aero went on the market in Brazil in 1960, received an exterior redesign by Brooks Stevens in 1963 (below), and remained in production through 1971, ultimately as a Ford Motor Company product.