UPDATE: I’ve updated these images with corrections and four additional ads. You can a similar listing of Collier ads in black and white. I’ve added two ads that only appeared in the CIO-News, one that only appeared in Colliers, and one Sat Evening Post ad that I’d missed.
Original Post (03/01/2019): I tried to find a listing of all the Willys-Overland ads and their issue dates that were published in the Saturday Evening Post during and after WWII. Unable to find any good resource, I spent the last three days surfing through 250 issues of the magazine using the Saturday Evening Post non-profit site, which costs $15 a year to use. Then I organized them in a way that I hoped would make it easier for me to study them. Hopefully, it’s handy for you all, too. For expediency and bandwidth size, I used low-resolution images to create the files below. Eventually, I’ll go back and replace them with hi res images so that everything is clearer when viewed more closely.
The ads started in May of 1942 (at least that’s the earliest I found) and were published on average once a month. All ads published up to November of 1945 were placed on the inside of the back cover.
On November 10, 1945, Willys-Overland formally introduced the CJ-2A to Saturday Evening Post readers with a more centralized, two-page ad. After that, one or two-page ads for the CJ-2A appeared until August of 1946, when the first wagon ad appeared in the magazine.
These are the Norman Rockwells of Willys Jeeps.
Some of these would make for some great posters!
Is that a Al toy 2a jeep in second photo?
are any of these available for purchase?
These are awesome and I have a few from original magazines. Individual Repros are available from Kaiser-Willys as well as the book; “Selling the All-American Wonder” that has a bunch of these poster all in one book.
Thanks for calling tech-support. 🙂
Dave,
I will be linking to this over at farmjeep.com under the Ads section. I’ve done lots of searching for ag related ads and never thought of searching the Saturday Evening Posts.
Once again, thank you for this great find.
Barry
Chris: These same issues did contain Rockwell’s art as well. According to Brendan at http://this-old-jeepdotcom.blogspot.com, four different artists worked on the art: Benton Clark, Charles Horndorff, John Howard and, most famously, James M. Sessions.
Tim & Steve: As Matt also notes, prints of a few of these can be purchased at Kaiser Willys: https://www.kaiserwillys.com/nsearch/?q=prints based on the print size, it seems these mimic the actual size of the magazine print.
Bob: I agree, it looks like an Al-toy.
Matt: I hadn’t realized, until Maury pointed it out last week, that I’ve never owned a copy of Fred’s “Selling” book. My copy should arrive next week.
Barry: Glad you like it!
Dave – Thanks ! This must have been a lot of work on your part ! I wonder what happened to the original art work ?
Rick: My guess is that the originals are split between museums and private collectors. James M. Sessions, as an example, was a busy artist and there are a large number of illustrations for sale: https://www.invaluable.com/catalog/searchLots.cfm?scp=m&ad=DESC&alf=1&issc=1&artistref=1u9wuux4bv&shw=50&ord=2&row=1 (but I couldn’t find any of his work for W-O for sale)
Dave……once again……thanks for coming up with all this really cool stuff. Interesting to see ads from the month I was born…….1945 was a very good year !!
Excellent work, Dave. It’s fascinating to see the changes in Willys’ advertising over that time frame. Being able to view all these ads together in one place makes doing so far easier. Thank you for all the effort, not to mention the expense, in putting this together.
Thank you so much Dave!! What a great collection!
my old girlfriend used to sell antique stuff and she cut out a lot of these willys ads , gave me a jeepster ad framed once , what ever happened to her ? who knows , lemme google search , hmmm , lemme try the obits …
Wow! Thanks for pulling those together. Some really nice ads these
What a nice bit of research! Thank you for posting this! FYI— There is a book I have that contains reprints of some of these: “Selling The All-American Wonder” by Frederick Coldwell
Very Cool !! thanks for doing all this work. Any thought to making this into one big poster? Id be a buyer.
Thanks
Tom