I recognized it from a letter that was published in Collectible Automobile August 2000 issue, but better to let Mr. Larson tell the story of the car in his own words:
Your article on Rhys Miller in the April 2000 issue was of great interest to me because I pulled some of the Kaiser Aluminum ads of cars in the future in the Sixties and threw them in a file. One of those ads is the Waimea, shown in your article on page 77. Five years ago, after restoring five cars, I decided to do something different. I dug out the old file, retrieved the sketch of the Waimea and decided to try to build it. Because the driver sits in the middle up front, there is no room for an engine up there, so I started with a Corvair Lakewood wagon. It attracts a lot of attention wherever I drive it.
Henry Larson
New Brighton, Minnesota
(Reprint of the letter in Collectible Automobile August 2000). In trying to do more research on the car I stumbled upon a site (which I can no longer find) regarding the sale of the car sometime after this letter was published, and referring to the builder as Blake Larson. At least one Corvair forum has also reprinted the letter so presumably there isn't a whole lot more information to be had, other than to say this is an impressive and ambitious car for anyone to have built based on renderings alone. To sum up: the Kaiser Waimea (a rendering from 1958, actually) was never built by Kaiser, nor was it built in the 50s-60s, but was instead built in the mid-90s from a 1961(?) Corvair Lakewood and other automotive parts by an enthusiast! A bit of a conundrum, therefore, to answer!
