Photos courtesy Chrysler Group LLC.
For those born after the Second World War, it’s hard to envision a time without the go-anywhere, do-almost-anything Jeep. Created by a War Department need for a four-wheel-drive light reconnaissance vehicle, the Jeep won the hearts of those it served in combat, and then proved a sales success among sportsmen, farmers and ranchers in peacetime America. It’s no exaggeration to say the Jeep created the off-roading hobby, and its incredible success can be traced back to a single ancestor – the Willys MB.
To be clear, Willys-Overland Motors wasn’t the first company to submit a design to the U.S. Army for testing. When the solicitation for bids went out on July 11, 1940, American Bantam, Ford and Willys all expressed interest in the project, but Bantam won the initial contract by agreeing to meet the Army’s near-impossible deadline and delivering a single example for evaluation within 45 days. Tests of Bantam’s “Blitz Buggy” proved promising, so the Army ordered an additional 70 units for further evaluation.
Representatives of both Ford and Willys were present at the Bantam trials, and the War Department provided each manufacturer with copies of the blueprints for the Bantam submission (which was now deemed property of the U.S. government). Aided by the development work performed by Bantam, both automakers submitted their own prototypes for evaluation in the fall of 1940. The Willys entry, dubbed the “Quad,” and Ford’s entry, called the “Pygmy,” were then subjected to testing alongside the Bantam BRC 60. Proving how desperate the need for such a vehicle was, the Army declared all companies the winner and immediately ordered nearly 8,000 examples for extensive field trials, with the bulk of the order (3,700) awarded to Ford, followed by Bantam (2,642) and Willys (1,500).
Early submissions proved that some of the government-specified criteria were unrealistic; the mandated weight of 1,300 pounds could not be achieved, so this contract allowed vehicles to weigh as much as 2,160 pounds. Names of supplied vehicles were changed as well, with the Bantam now called the BRC 40, the Ford called the GP and the Willys called the MA. Thousands of miles of testing, usually under the harshest of circumstances, revealed that all had strengths and weaknesses. The troops in the field, however, showed a preference for the Willys MA, largely on the strength of its 63 horsepower Go-Devil four-cylinder engine.
By the summer of 1941, the Army had chosen the Willys design as its preferred light reconnaissance vehicle, awarding the low-volume automaker with a contract to produce 16,000 units of its finalized MB design. It also helped that Willys was the lowest bidder, and its per unit cost of $748.74 was $39.58 less expensive than Bantam and $33.85 less than Ford. Within months it became apparent that Willys couldn’t build inventory fast enough to meet demand, so Ford was contracted to build the Willys design under the GPW name. By the end of the war, 634,569 Jeeps had been constructed, including 2,642 by Bantam, 281,578 by Ford and 350,349 by Willys.
Its capabilities were the stuff of legend, and the Jeep was nearly unstoppable in terrain as varied as desert sand and winter snow. Jeeps were used to plow runways, cut trenches for telephone wire, and, fitted with steel wheels, even reportedly used to haul railroad freight cars. The Jeep gave front-line troops previously unimagined mobility, and even generals soon realized the benefit of high-speed mobility in reviewing troops. None other than General George C. Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff, called the Jeep, “America’s greatest contribution to modern warfare.”
During the war, few thought that such a purpose-built vehicle, with virtually no concessions to comfort or amenities, would later see demand from a peacetime civilian population. Willys experimented with introducing the Jeep for agricultural purposes, but in the end the “Universal Jeep” name won out over the “Agrijeep” name, and on July 17, 1945, Willys began production of the Universal Jeep CJ-2A. The company’s future would temporarily ride on the Jeep’s success, as the small manufacturer found itself unable to compete against larger automakers in the purchase of machine tools necessary to ramp up production of civilian automobiles. In peacetime, the Jeep would once again come to the rescue, saving Willys from what would have been almost certain business failure.
The Jeep has won its share of honors over the years as well, with one Guadalcanal survivor Willys MB awarded a “Purple Heart” for wounds sustained in combat before being enshrined in the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico, Virginia. In 1991, 50 years after Willys was awarded the U.S. Army contract, the Willys MB was recognized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as an International Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.
Since its creation, the Willys MB has spawned similar vehicles from Land Rover, Toyota, Suzuki and others, and was largely responsible for the development of off-roading as a hobby. The popularity of SUVs can be partially attributed to the Jeep as well, even though most would be left trailside, broken and bleeding, if they tried to match the MB’s capabilities. Though modern Jeep Wranglers bear only a passing resemblance to the MB (and offer drivers creature comforts unimaginable in 1945), the fact that a modern evolved version is still in production more than seven decades on proves the merit of the Jeep’s basic design.
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