UPDATE: More Scans from Brian Chuchua’s Catalog (the ones from the previous post are also included:

The back cover notes that Brian Chuchua’s is a charter member of SEMA.

A rare McCain Hub sighting:

This may be the earliest ad I’ve seen for fiberglass bodies. 

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In the early 1960s, Hoosier Machine Products out of Pendleton, Oregon, (just an hour south of me) began selling conversion kits for jeeps. The company’s kits allowed the repowering of jeeps using Ford, Chef, GMC, Mercury, Dodge, Studebaker and Pontiac engines. That’s a pretty impressive, wide range of options, especially for a company out of Pendleton, which was pretty remote at the time. But, given the long distances Pendleton owner’s jeeps had to travel to reach other towns and the existence of the nearby, steep Blue Mountains, which provided endless jeeping possibilities, perhaps there was a reason Pendleton jeeps need more power?

Also, a big thanks go to Maury for spotted this brochure for me!

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This December 29, 1950, ad in the Evening Star promoted Sligo Motors, Inc, a new Willys-Overland dealer. Note the Willys-Overland service sign in the lower left corner. I don’t think I’ve seen that one.

This ad appeared in the Marion Progress out of North Carolina on February 10, 1949.

UPDATE: I ran across another large Willys Makes Sense ad in the February 13, 1951, issue of the Evening Star newspaper that differed from the others.

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Original Post: May 21, 2019:

In 1950, Willys-Overland launched a Willys Makes Sense advertising campaign. Unlike past campaigns, such as the 1948 City and City ads, which were about encouraging the sales of wagons and positioning the wagon as a luxury vehicle, the Willys Makes Sense appears to have been organized to re-imagine how the public should view the brand.

Before I get too deeply into this, I’d like to note that the way I’d prefer to write this article is to document specific reasons behind Willys-Overland’s decision to make such a big change. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to enough financial material as I’d like (especially annual reports). So, conjecture and theory will have to do for now.

BACKGROUND: After WWII, pent up demand meant lots of sales for automakers. That could explain, in part, why post-war sales were pretty good for Willys-Overland. For example, sales increased from almost 79,000 jeeps in 1946 to 159,000 jeeps in 1948. But, in 1949, sales plunged to almost half, coming in at 86,000. I don’t have details into why sales dropped so much, but likely parts or material shortages or labor disputes could have had an impact. Certainly, the recession of late 1948 – late 1949 didn’t help sales at all!

Future sales might not have looked too good for 1950 and beyond either. As of 1950 the US produced 76% of automobiles, but given the post-war rebuilding/resurging of industry world-wide, I expect automakers must have realized that international competition would return soon (by 1955 US market share would drop to 67%). This may have stimulated management to clean up their branding as soon as possible to protect against increasing competition (remember that Willys-Overland had expected to sell 25% of their autos internationally, based on the 1946 Fortunate Magazine article).

Another issue Willys-Overland was facing was that going into 1950 the company still didn’t have a registered trademark for the term JEEP (wouldn’t get it until June of 1950). Added to that, the company was not only producing 4WD 1/4 ton jeeps, trucks, and wagons, but also 2WD trucks, wagons, Jeepsters, and an upcoming automobile. Such a portfolio of non-4WD vehicles must have concerned management that it wasn’t just a “jeep” company; so the challenge of how the company should represent itself to dealers and consumers had to have become an issue.

Finally, in a similar vein, up until 1950, the company had been positioning itself as the ‘Jeep’ company, with ads that emphasized the Universal ‘Jeep’, the ‘Jeep’ Truck and the ‘Jeep’ Wagon. Perhaps with the introduction of the Jeepster (note that the company did not call it the ‘Jeep’ Jeepster nor was there any ‘Jeep’ branding on the introductory brochure), the branding issue must have really came to a head. Because of the entrenched nature of Willys-Overland’s efforts to become ‘Jeep’, management may have felt that a company-wide retooling of the  company’s branding was in order.

Perhaps one, two, or all of these issues resulted in the 1950 rebrand of the company as a WILLYS manufacturer with a wide range of 2WD and 4WD vehicles for sale. (For a look back at 1952, see Derek’s post “When the CJ-3B Was New“).

NON-JEEP BRANDED ADS: 

Willys-Overland began 1950 with an ad that felt similar to past ads, but excluded the ‘Jeep’ brand. For example, in January of 1950 Willys published this ad in the Saturday Evening Post. Note the reference to ‘Jeep’ has been replaced with a small ‘Jeep’ badge.

January 07, 1950, ad in the Saturday Evening Post

As did Colliers Magazine on January 21, 1950:

In March of 1950, Willys-Overland published an issue of Salesbuilder. Like the name indicates, it was a magazine produced to help educate the sales force. There’s no evidence of ‘Jeep’ anywhere on any of the pages (apparently, I haven’t published either of my 1950 Salesbuilder magazines … that will happen in the next few days). 

March 1950 Salesbuilder

By April 1950, the ‘Jeep’ badge and brand was gone from magazine ads altogether. This was especially noticeable on the introduction of the Willys Hurricane engine, as that power plant would be installed in upcoming 4WD jeeps as well as the 2WD vehicles.

April 22, 1950, issue of the Saturday Evening Post

Even the truck ads had the ‘Jeep’ Truck branding removed:

May 06, 1950, issue of the Saturday Evening Post

So, even before Willys-Overland launched its Willys Makes Sense campaign, the company had begun shifting its advertising away from ‘Jeep’ and toward WILLYS.

WILLYS MAKES SENSE:

The earliest documents I can find for the Willys Make Sense campaign were dealer-related training documents printed in June of 1950. Throughout these documents you’d have to search to find ‘Jeep” anywhere.This first one

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This ad was featured in the February 06, 1943, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, page 59.

This is a an ad I don’t think I’ve seen. This Adolph Treidler illustration was published in the April 25, 1943, issue of Time Magazine.

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“This is an original 1943 print ad for International Nickel! It measures approximately 11″ x 8” overall, has no tears or stains, comes from a dry, high-altitude, smoke-free environment, and is strictly graded

I’d won this a few years ago on eBay, but never got this posted. The scans are not the best, but I’ll have to wait until later to redo them.

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The seller has several of these neat Willys Aero brochures. It’s not anything jeep-related, but it’s a neat advertising piece. This advertisement dovetails with Willys 1951-1953 efforts to push the WILLYS brand. At the start of 1953 Willys-Overland introduced the Aero Falcon, the Aero Ace, and the Aero Lark.

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Here’s a collection of ads published in the Saturday Evening Post between 1950 and 1951. This will prove useful as you read through the post underneath this one.

This introduction to the Jeepster book is curious for its lack of any ‘Jeep’ branding. I’m guessing this booklet was produced in 1948?

This is neat. No size dimensions provided.

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I spotted this ad on google, though it was gone from the actual destination, so I can’t say in what magazine this ad was published. It treats the Army jeep as a tomboy and the wagon as a Lady.

These are all the ads I could find on Saturday Evening Posts published between January 1948 and December 1949. Again, it seems Willys-Overland’s advertising was an exercise in experimentation. Some notes:

1. City-And-City Campaign: The first obvious item is that Willys-Overland ran its wagon city-and-city campaign in 1948, but did not run all the ads produced in the Saturday Evening Posts (as documented here). Collier’s Magazine also got a few as did Life Magazine.
2. W-O Graphic: In a November 11, 1946 (see 1946-1947 ads here), ad Willys-Overland used script for Willys Overland Motors. In December 21, 1946, the script was accompanied by the graphical representation of Willys-Overland in the form of an yellow “O”, colored red on the inside, with a yellow “W” atop that design.
   
   The scipt disappeared in January on 1947, leaving only the W-O logo. In February and March of 1947 the W-O logo was absent from ads, but then in April of 1947 it made a brief return, before disappearing again.
   
   In Febrary of 1948, the W-O logo reappeared, this time with the ‘Jeep’ logo hovering above it. That combo was used through May of 1948.
   
   In June of 1948, the ‘Jeep’ was dropped in favor of just the W-O logo. By July, the W-O logo disappeared for 1948 and 1949.
3. CJ-2A Barely Advertised: Trucks and wagons dominate the advertising. There’s only one ad in two years for the CJ-2A and none for the CJ-3A. One reason for this is that Willys-Overland expanded their advertising to other magazines. The Farming magazines (Farm Journal, Country Gentleman, and others) were more CJ-ad oriented.
4. ‘Jeep’ Product Badge: Through 1948 and most of 1949 Willys-Overland was advertising ‘Jeep’ Trucks and ‘Jeep’ Station Wagons. However, in late 1949 the company began a switch to WILLYS ‘Jeep’ Station Wagons (see October 15, 1949 ad), then the ‘Jeep’ name was relegated in December 1949 to a small (new) badge, while WILLYS became the more prominent branding once again. Here’s how the badge looked.
   
   In January of 1950, the company shortened WILLYS ‘Jeep’ Station Wagons to Willys Station Wagons, dropping the ‘Jeep’ entirely.
   

   January 07, 1950 Willys -Overland ad in the Sat Evening Post, page 86. Note the use of the ‘Jeep’ badge and the return of WILLYS as the primary brand.

5. From ‘Jeep’ to WILLYS: After February 1950, Willys-Overland dropped the ‘Jeep’ badge and the ‘Jeep’ branding of the wagon as a ‘Jeep’. Instead, the company went full WILLYS branding, as seen in the September ad below. This seems incredibly strange, given the company had finally won the Trademark for JEEP that year  (June 13, 1950 Awarded JEEP registered trademark).
   

   September 23, 1950, Willys-Overland ad in the Sat evening Post, page 57. Note that ‘Jeep’ has disappeared completely from the advertising.

   Why did Willys-Overland drop ‘Jeep’? I have no idea. But, it’s no wonder the average person is/was confused about whether a wagon is a ‘Jeep’ wagon or a Willys wagon!

6. In October of 1946, Willys-Overland introduced the phrase, “Makers of America’s Most Useful Vehicles” within its ads. That phrase would accompany ads into the 1950s. However, in December of 1949, Willys-Overland introduced a new phrase, “World’s Largest Maker of 4-Wheel-Drive Vehicles”. This phrase was only used once in 1949, but a variation of that phrase would eventually grace Willys-Overland ads (or Willys Motors) in the form of  “World’s largest manufacturer of 4-Wheel-Drive Vehicles”. I don’t have dates for when the former was dropped and the latter adopted … yet.

Below are the 1948-1949 ads from the Saturday Evening Journal:

This Essential Special Service Tools brochure by the Miller Manufacturing Company appears to have been first published in late 1945 or early 1946 (I’m assuming this based on the Willys-Cars-Trucks-J sign on the cover). It was then updated with this second edition in December of 1948.

These aren’t best scans, so I’ve had to do repairs in Photoshop. I’ve actually had this digital brochure scan for several years, but finally had a chance to assembled the scans yesterday, after Maury noted that this has the Willys sign, which would make it the latest document we’ve found with the Willys-Cars-Trucks-J sign on it. There’s a companion brochure for Trucks in the post below.

This Essential Special Service Tools for Trucks brochure by the Miller Manufacturing Company appears to have been first published in January of 1948. It was then updated with this second edition in December of 1948.

These aren’t best scans. so I’ve had to do repairs in Photoshop. I’ve actually had this digital brochure scan for several years, but finally had a chance to assembled the scans yesterday, after Maury noted that this has the Willys sign, which would make it the latest document we’ve found with the Willys-Cars-Trucks-J sign on it. There’s a companion brochure for CJ-2As in the post above.

UPDATE: Maury pointed out that a porcelain sign of this badge sold in 2017 (see bottom).

In the April of 1946 issue of the Saturday Evening Post (same month in Colliers, too), Willys-Overland introduced a new advertising badge for the Willys engine.

As you can see in the introduction ad (A New Chapter), it was matched with the announcement of the Willys-Overland Jeep Station Wagon, though the ad hides the wagon in anticipation of its summer of 1946 launch.

The badge made a second appearance within the release-announcement of the station wagon in the August 18, 1946, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

The next month, in September of 1946, the badge appears for a third time, again associated with the wagon.

As quickly as the badge appeared, it disappeared with the same speed. For the October 1946 ad, which included a wagon in it, the Saturday Evening Post seemingly replaced the engine badge with a smaller badge, one with a “W” over the “O”. It’s the earliest jeep ad I can find with that badge (if anyone knows of another, earlier ad, please let me know).

At some point, there was a porcelain version of the sign. One sold on eBay in 2017:

Below is an aggregation of Saturday Evening Post Ads for the period January 1946 – December 1947.

As mentioned in the post above, there was an engine badge that appeared briefly. Another curiosity is the shift in March 1947 to black and white ads for the CJ-2A. Perhaps that was done to further differentiate them from the wagon and truck ads?