(first posted 12/12/2011) I have to admit up front, I’m not a Jeep guy. I’m not an off-roader or into trucks either. I do like well-designed machines. Very few cars, very few machines of any kind, are as simple, honest and 100% on purpose as this Jeep. I love this machine.
This beauty showed up at the corner store the last warm Sunday afternoon we had this fall. Four steel wheels with stout tires, each one plainly driven through axles, drivelines, a transmission and an engine. Two places to sit, a place to put things. Gas tank. Steering, brakes, windshield, wipers and lights. Straight strong sheet metal, no more than necessary. Nothing else. Each the right size, in just the right place for its task – carry two people anywhere on earth.
The owner came out and we had a very nice chat. He found it in a barn down in the Willamette Valley, all there and driveable, but showing its years of hard work. Eventually he got it all apart, scoured and repainted Picket Grey, and put back as it should be. The plates came from an antique shop, just the right year, 1947. In Oregon you can reactivate old plates, so these are legal on the road.
Has there ever been a simpler, more effective bumper? The iconic seven slots first appeared on the Civilian Jeep (CJ). Willys’ first Jeeps had flat iron slats. Ford originated the stamped sheet metal slots, nine of them, which all the Jeep builders adopted for the military Jeeps. After the war Willys went to seven slots and trademarked them. At the end, their trademarks on “Jeep” and the grille were the most valuable things Willys had.
WIllys-Overland of Toledo, Ohio, was a major American car maker, #2 in sales behind the Model T through the 1910’s, and a steady #4 through the 1920’s. The Depression hit W-O very hard. Willys fell off the leader charts for good, but barely survived. Then came World War II, and the Jeep MB (CC here), created by American Bantam, built in volume by Willys and Ford.
The Willys Go Devil engine was their big contribution to the Army’s Jeep. It’s a 132 cubic inch flathead four, very undersquare. 60 hp at 4000 rpm, 105 lb. ft. at 2000 rpm. Plenty of torque to four wheels pull CJ-2A’s 2100 lb. curb weight.
After the war Willys gave up on their passenger cars and just built Jeeps. CJ-2A was the first mass production 4WD vehicle. Over 210,000 were sold from 1945 to 1949. Tens of millions of 4WD and AWD trucks, wagons, SUVs and cars have been built since then. It all starts right here.
Behind the wheel we find it’s well equipped, with turn signals, a full set of gauges, and a full set of shift levers for the three-speed transmission, transfer case and front axle. That’s a 60 mph speedometer, so don’t be getting any freeway ideas.
This machine was retired to a barn after a hard working farm life. Reborn in the 21st century, it reminds us how four wheels and an engine can carry its driver nearly anywhere. Such as down to the corner on a nice afternoon to get some beer.
I whole-heartedly approve of the “cargo” in back!
Especially up there in ‘Hops-Country’.
I have always thought of these early Jeeps as the postwar Model T, only with 4 wheel drive and an electric start. You are correct – this is a plain, simple, honest vehicle. Traits that I admire, but have mostly gone away as time has passed.
I have never been a Jeep guy either, but there is something about these that whisper in my ear.
I totally agree that the “form follows function” of these old Jeeps is quite special. I remember be facinated with them as a child and even now I can’t help but think that this stainess steel body would look so nice transformed into livingroom furniture.
http://cj3a-cj3b-bodykits.com/
beautifully done unlike the pansy- a**ed jeeps at icon.
http://www.icon4x4.com/overview/cj/models
It just doesn’t look right to me without being in olive drab with a hood number! Needs a jerrycan mounted on the fender, too.
Don’t forget the Tommy-Gun cradle along the dash!
Most had an M-1 Garand cradle at the base of the windshield. The tommy gun was usually clipped to the pintle that mounted the .30-cal. machine gun.
My father had a CJ2A identical to this one, except for a folding canvas top over the 2 seats only. It also did farm work for several years, and had brush guards over its driveshafts. I remember an old picture of it towing the hayrake at my grandparents’ farm.
You just reminded me of something…they still make a vehicle just like this: A Gator!
http://www.deere.com/wps/dcom/en_US/products/equipment/gator_utility_vehicles/gator_utility_vehicles.page?
Yep–UTVs (and to a lesser extent, ATVs) have taken the place of old mini-4x4s when it comes to off-road utility work. Case IH even makes one with the Scout name.
Willys marketed these as a substitute for an expensive farm tractor. They were available with a power-take-off, and could mount implements like a post-hole auger or a rotary mower. Kinda like Willys’ answer to the Unimog. I know there’s old print ads, and even early television ads out there, I’ve seen them on the History Channel’s Modern Marvels episode featuring the Jeep.
My dream – and it’s gonna be unrealized, I’m getting older and broker – was to get hold of one of those things. Wouldn’t matter what shape it was in; I just needed the chassis for a start.
From there…I’d do a build. Glass or stainless body. Maybe a modern engine. Tubular frame. And, the perfect Saturday-afternoon errand-runner!
I doubt I’d keep it 4wd; one doesn’t take antiques or reproduction models out to beat the snot out of them. Not if one’s sane. Anyway, today’s four-wheelers do a better job on the trail, and even in light snowplowing. But…I say it as someone who got the bug a long time ago…there’s only one Jeep.
FWIW…the grille and name were trademarked much, much later than your example. Willys, later Kaiser, fought for YEARS for the trademark on the name Jeep. The application was filed in 1950; but Ford challenged it – it was THEIR scout-car, a Willys clone made for DoD, which was catalogued as a “GP.” And, they claimed, the word “jeep” came from a slurring of that designation.
Which was why, in the Kaiser years, the name ‘Jeep’ was always surrounded by single quotation marks. The trademark dispute hadn’t been resolved; or, in later years, had been but the stylebook never corrected.
The seven-slot grille was never trademarked until the Daimler years. I was rebuilding a Wrangler into a CJ at the time; and finding a grille was well-nigh impossible. All the aftermarket parts builders had been served with “cease and desist” orders on the grille; and Jeep wasn’t making CJ grilles available any longer.
I finally found a damaged never-sold grille from an aftermarket supplier in the back of an off-road parts store. It needed to be straightened and have the tack-welds redone, but it was clean and otherwise okay. But…it was a new marketing idea, to have the seven-slot grille declared “Trade Dress” and off-limits to other manufacturers.
Here’s more on the name “Jeep” than you ever wanted! You are right that it was a slurring of GP. However, there is more to it and the quotation marks. The Popeye cartoon reels were wildly popular in the thirties. In a few episodes, viewers were introduced to Popeye’s and Olive’s very unusual pet – he was named Eugene, and he was an animal no one had ever seen before, capable of many great tricks and a most entertaining character. Apparently unique in all the world, he was a species known in the cartoon as a jeep.
Many wartime GI’s had grown up on Popeye, and compared the new vehicle to Eugene, and decided that GP was pronounced “Jeep”.
How do I know this? My father’s CJ2A was named Eugene, as would be any Jeep of mine, were I to have one.
I found this in Portland, not Eugene. 😉
I saw references on the web to the Willys-Ford litigation but not enough detail to mention. So that’s why the quoted ‘Jeep’, makes sense, thanks.
This presents us with an Automotive History What-If: What if Ford had ended up with the Jeep trademark instead of Willys?
I’m glad that an “independent” held the name, Ford did build a lot of them, but It was actually developed by American Bantam of Butler, PA.
Ya and got a royal screwing for their effort. They never produced one, the government gave the blueprint to Willy’s and Ford and they got the fat government contracts to build over 600,000 of them. American Bantam was thrown a few crumbs, mainly making trailers for them.
There was a war going on and the government needed production. American Bantam couldn’t provide that.
Yep, But that will always happen with a small business that lacks the money to pay off certain elect….Er, I mean lacking in ,Ah,Er Resources, Yeah, that’s what I meant…..
Nice example ! I love that this one is NOT in some bogus Army livery.
Nice flat grey paint, utilitarian to the max.
Long may you run, little Willys.
Paul and I were thinking of doing a CC Clue on this CJ-2A, but we couldn’t find a clue-able shot! Everywhere you look it’s either unmistakably early Jeep or featureless sheet metal. That’s proof of its remarkably unique appearance. It left us flat clueless!
I never wanted one of these. If I did I would have had one.
Funny how things change.
Dang, sure makes me think about my old 48′
Nice! A little more practical for Oregon weather.
Still don’t understand how Jeeps had telescopic dampers in 1947 and Austin-Morris / BMC / British Leyland were still using lever-arm dampers into the 70s.
Because Britain 🙂
Nice Jeep. I had the chance to drive a 1950 M38 off road. Fun!
I know a few people who think of automatic transmissions as new-fangled and not to be trusted. No, I’m not joking.
Wait, that’s me….
To be fair, Land Rover had no problem with copying the Willy’s MB’s telescopic dampers.
Only BMC and UK Fords didnt have Tele shocks by the mid 50s but BMC kept lever arm shocks on MGs well into the 70s.
CJs are very cool, having owned a couple, and used them as intended, enjoyed them immensely. Either it is my age, or the vehicles themselves, but from the Wrangler on, they seem to have lost the elemental quality that made previous generations appealing (to me).
I got to drive a 1946 CJ2A a few months ago. It was remarkably fun, even if I almost flung myself onto the pavement by turning right too abruptly having already failed to notice there was a lap belt on the floor. Sadly, the Jeep has since rolled down a steep driveway and into a sold wall.
Post WW2 currency controls kept civilian Jeeps mostly away from here some snuck in but most Ive seen are the WW2 ex army variety, or the Mahindra clone of the little CJ, must shoot one of those one day for the cohort.
I love how the steering wheel hub is just a hex bolt
And the current completely unrelated made in Italy Fiat based Jeep Renegade is totally designed to recall these and its successors. Including little Jeep faces here and there and jerry can taillights.
Nice ~
I grew up in the halcyon dayze of cheap ex WWII and Korea surplus Jeeps , we bought a pristine ’52 M38A1 in 1967 from Ft. Devins Army base for $50 that looked nearly new and ran perfectly .
I’d always wanted a flat fender MB , GPW or CJ2A but life sort of got in the way and the simple reality check that I rarely go off roading and these things are deadly above 50 MPH (there’s an over drive kit) meant even the $800 ~ $1,000 ones I found here and there until very recently , didn’t get the nod .
Icon , FWIW , is an interesting company , I interviewed them last year , not quite my cuppa tea but they do make some really good products , you just have to be a gazillionaire to afford them .
-Nate
I wonder how many G.I.s fell off the back of those things? The cargo area is very small & shallow, not appropriate for people to ride on, unlike the VW Kübelwagen. Putting the spare tire there doesn’t help either.
There are some photos of these pulling a 37mm AT gun, as if it posed a real threat to Panzers. However, it was badly undersized by the time the US entered the War (its German counterpart was nicknamed the “Door Knocker” by its crews); this was why they had to acquire rights to the Brit. 6-pdr (57mm) AT gun instead. Only in the Pacific did the 37mm prove very useful.
We had a ’48 on the family farm just like this one and that’s the vehicle I learned to drive on. I remember one big snowstorm in the 60’s where nothing else could move and Dad and I delivered groceries to some of the neighbors in the jeep. When the motor gave out, my brother and I bought a OHV engine from a later model Jeepster and put it in the CJ. We eventually blew that motor and Dad sold the Jeep.
Had mine out all weekend 🙂