Sure glad they didn't use the prototype Henry J

[BobsJ]

the caption says the production car was even uglier, I totaly disagree.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1940s-and-1950s-kaiser-frazer-concept-cars4.htm

[joefrazer]

Then there were the Willys postwar prototypes. It looks alot like the Kaiser small car.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

There are a lot of prototype small car ideas that Kaiser puttered with between 1942 and 1949 when the design was locked up.

[HJ-ETEX]

What a lot of articles about "prototype" cars fail to mention are production methods. For instance the "AMP" car which is the 3rd from the top in the images Jack posted (It still exists and has been restored) used a tubing frame. It was good for judging size, layout and to a limited extent,  styling.  Compare it to the late prototype model which is the 4th image. There are styling cues in common, but if you compare frame and body construction methods, they are quite different. The production HJ was revised to use as much stamped steel as possible.

One of the Brooks Stevens proposals for a post-war Willys car was to use MB Jeep frames with conventional passenger type bodies. This would result in an odd looking short coupled body. But more important, the frame would be too stiff, too heavy, and much too expensive in terms of material and assembly.

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

The Willys prototype sedan was of course never intended to be the basis for a Henry J automobile.  The AMP car was also never intended for production; it was a one-off built as a contract job for American Metal Products to show off the many products they could produce for other customers.

For those interested, I would suggest you look for information on the following items:
Chevrolet Cadet (c.1946)
Ford Vedette (c.1947)
Nash N-X-I (c. 1949-50).

The Chevy was a development study to see what a postwar Chevy that could be sold for around $1,000 would be like, same for the Nash.  The Vedette is the car Ford's French operation built off the Ford study for a similarly priced automobile.  When you look at these cars, the Henry J does not seem quite that bad.

[HJ-ETEX]

It is good Jack mentioned the Vedette. The photos I have seen look like a shrunken 49 Mercury. It was also claimed to used the Ford V8 60 (60 hp small flathead V8) which was never attractive to US buyers. I would think the French would have demanded a 4 cylinder alternative.
Somehow, the French Ford operations got folded into Simca and there were claims of Simcas in the late 50s having the V8 60 available.

There are claims that a lot of the design work for the Chevy Cadet ended up as the 1st Holden.

There were also several series of downsized Mopars explored in the late 1930s. The cutest one I saw was a 2/3 size version of a 38 Plymouth. The front seat room would have been about like a VW but like many of these experiments, the weight and therefore cost of the car would not have been sufficiently less than what they were already building. 

[kaiserfrazerlibrary]

Ford of France was not folded into SIMCA which Chrysler Corporation purchased in the late 1950's.  Ford made the engine for use in various French cars and light truck.