This June 1950 Ad highlights the new Hurricane Powered half-ton truck from an unknown magazine.

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“Original magazine advertisement measures 10 X 13 inches (approx.).”

The July 1973 and August 1973 issues of Four Wheeler Magazine included these two ads for fiberglass racing shells. I’m not sure when World Plastics began advertising in the magazine, but I doubt it had been for very long. The ad on the right shows a full-body size flat fender shell, while the ad on the right shows a narrow body shell (both Bobcat and Parkette also produced racing shells).

I don’t know how long these were offered, what happened to the shells, or what happened to the World Plastic’s company.

UPDATE: Maury shared a magazine page on eBay that contains a similar ad to the one shown at the  bottom of this page. It’s almost identical, except that Jeep now appears with single-quotes. 

The use of single quotes outside of a set of double quotes is uncommon. One editor summed it up best by describing it’s use this way: If a phrase or a word is uncommon or you are highlighting it to the reader for a particular reason – for example, as a neologism or a conscious use of jargon – use single quotation marks. Any punctuation sits outside single quotation marks. Thus, I suspect Willys-Overland felt they could defend the use of ‘JEEP’ by describing it’s presence as a descriptive use of jargon, rather than an attempt to back into the trademarking of the name. However, backing into the trademark using single quotes was exactly what the company was doing.

To answer the question I asked in the original post (was the bottom ad a local dealer or national corporate campaign), given these two ads appeared in two different national magazines, it seems likely this simple ad construction was part of a national campaign by Willys-Overland to begin prepping the public for post war jeep sales, This particular ad appeared in the October 1944 issue of Successful Farming.

This page is for sale on eBay:

The purposeful addition of the single quotes reflects a similar change seen in the iconic Saturday Evening Posts during 1944, as demonstrated in these ads. The first highlighted ad of February 05, 1944, was the first time Willys-Overland replaced the prominent WILLYS stamp on the Post ads with JEEP (or in this case JEEPS) with no single quotes.

See all the Willys-Overland WWII ads 1941-1946 here: http://www.ewillys.com/2019/03/10/willys-overland-ads-in-the-saturday-evening-post-1942-mid1946/

What isn’t quite the same is that the Midland Journal ad below without the single quotes lasted longer (through October 6 1944) than the Saturday Evening Post ads. Perhaps Willys-Overland purchased several months of ads beginning in June of 1944 right before the addition of the single quotes too place? However it happened, what the ad above shows is that Willys was correcting the single quotes’ issue across its advertising.

Why did the company ad the single quotes in the first place? As I argued in this long post on Willys Overland’s changing identity during WWII, I believe it stems from the 1944 congressional inquiry into the company’s efforts to trademark the JEEP name.

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Originally published March 29, 2020: Here’s an unusually small and succinct ad that appeared seven times in the Midland Journal out of Rising Sun, Maryland, from June 30, 1944, through October 6, 1944. I’ve yet to run across this specific ad elsewhere.

One thing to note is that in July of 1944, Willys-Overland began using single quotes around the word Jeep like this ‘Jeep’ major magazine ads, yet that was not done in any of the newspaper ads in the Midland Journal, as shown below. (Ed note …. Yeah, I know, not earth shattering news, but I never know when little details like this will add up to some insight).

The ad shown below was in the August 11, 1944, issue of the Midland Journal:

This shows how small the ad was within the newspaper page.

This eight-page Willys-Overland Sign Program sold on eBay for $38 (plus $4 shipping) late night. The seller only provided two pics, so I was unsure if this would be worth the money. Given the front-page design of the brochure, I’d guess this was produced around 1949. The design is reminiscent of other Willys-Overland catalogs of the era (see examples at the bottom).

“This is a 9 X 11 8 page brochure of WILLYS -OVERLAND SIGN PROGRAM  FACTORY APPROVED shows products offered to dealers from Neon Products of Lima Ohio some slight scuffing on the covers…also has a order blank”

A 5-foot version of the Willys Service Sign sold out of Buda, Texas, for $400 back in 2014. It was likely sign model #WO-111 (the large sign pictured on the left side of the left page). These are the only two interior pages that were included in the auction ad:

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Similar covers from 1949 that have the style AND the WO logo. For example, Barney has this 1949 Parts List catalog listed on eBay:

There’s this 1949 Jeepster owners manual:

And, this is a 1948 CJ-3A Owners Manual on eBay:

And this 1948 CJ-2A (with envelope) owner’s manual on eBay:

This is a great vintage ad for the Jeep Caravan ‘Free Show’. That’s a nice touch with the fire jeep shooting water up the side of the ad. This appeared in the November 6, 1947, issue of the News and Observer out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

This sold yesterday on eBay for $51 +shipping. I gave up bidding on it, because I couldn’t tell how many pages there were. I was concerned there were only four and didn’t want to get into a bidding war over it (I got another cool brochure instead).

Thanks to Andy for taking photos of his oversize truck brochures. These are framed and behind glass, so he had an understandably difficult time getting good photos. The first two are domestic brochures. The third is a French version of this Willys truck brochure.

UPDATE: Here’s an updated version of the post that separates the 1950-1952 oversize truck brochure from the sedan delivery wagon brochures with similar designs.

Originally Published Feb 26, 2021: I was inspired to purchase and learn more about the brochures below after realizing that a poster I saw during a visit at Dave Antram’s place in 2013. Here’s a photo of it:

While I originally thought these brochures were all printed in early 1950, I’m now less certain, as Colin pointed out that #1 (4WD Willys Truck) mentions “Key Starting”, which appeared in 1952. In addition, one of the truck brochures has “1951” printed on the subheading. I suspect we’ll never get firm evidence on the publish dates of these:

You can view the original scans using the following links:

1. The upper right New Willys Sedan Delivery with — Hurricane 4 Cylinder Engine (Copper?)
2. The upper left New Willys Sedan Delivery with — Hurricane 4 Cylinder Engine (blue) 
3. The lower left Sedan Delivery Export brochure with the “New” Hurricane (red)
4. The lower right Sedan Delivery with “Famous” Hurricane is here (blue): 

And now the trucks from the same period. I don’ have full scans of the bottom two trucks:

1. The upper left NEW 4WD WILLYS Truck brochure
2. The upper right NEW 1/2 Ton WILLYS Truck brochure
3. The lower left is of a French 4WD Willys Truck brochure:
4. The lower right brochure is a 1951 Willys 4WD Truck Brochure: 

Then there is this oddball Willys Delivery Sedan brochure that has the same front as the brochure above, but unfolds differently, is black and white, and has content arranged differently on the interior pages:

Over the past year, thanks to the pandemic and my Mother-in-Law’s health issues, we’ve traveled less. This has left more money to purchase vintage jeep documents. I purchased enough that I got behind on organizing them, so packing has been a good excuse to spend the past two days restructuring the binders so everything can fit.

There are binders of company brochures, 3rd party special equipment brochures, magazine articles, dealer newspapers, catalogs, and ads. This effort has been fueled by reader donations and ad revenue, along with gifts of from readers, so thanks to everyone out there! I see myself as the temporary custodian of these. My hope is to donate this collection in the future so others can benefit later. Much of the information on that table has been published on eWillys.

The binder on the lower right contains issues of Kaiser-Willys News, Willys News, and Jeep News produced from 1953-1963. I’d estimate I have roughly half of the issues produced. It also contains a couple issues of the mid-1950 Globe-trotter magazines (I believe there were more than 20 plus issues of those produced ..  a guy in the midwest told me a few years ago he had two dozen or so he wanted to sell, but wanted $1000 for them; I couldn’t justify that on my budget at the time). 

The set of binders shown below houses only domestic jeep-related brochures produced by Willys-Overland and Willys Motors (so roughly 1945-1962 … so, for example, there are no spec equipment brochures in those binders). I’d call this the core of my collection as I’m attempting to get all of these I can, including revisions to certain brochures (see next two posts). Unfortunately, some of the early brochures do not fit into the 8″x11″ binders, so I also have some large portfolio binders to house them (and large print ads, some posters, and other items) as well.

One goal of this collection had been to write an advertising history of Willys-Overland/Willys-Motors/Kaiser-Jeep, which showed the progression (and missteps) from the jeep as a 4-in-1-tool, to a jack-of-all-trades utility vehicle(s), to jeeps-as-a-fun toys, which the journey is the reward.

Part of the reason for making the smaller history posts over the years has been to write such a book in small parts; well, that and to determine if there was anything to write about. Because of this approach, there is plenty I can assemble from the site posts at this point to create a book framework, but there is still much more work to be done on that type of book.

At this point in life, I don’t want to write a book and simultaneously run the website, since for me that’s a 7-day a week proposition. Because, once I start writing, my head is so busy with ideas, and the need to write them down, that I can’t not write. I become obsessive, which is really the only way I can get big projects done (perhaps others can multi-task better?). After SLAG, which was two solid years of research and writing, I had to take a long break as I was mentally exhausted.

So, will a book arise out of all this? I’d say it’s a strong maybe, with a litany of qualifiers (Ann’s health, demand of the new home and property, and others). Whatever happens, I’ll keep collecting these brochures …

Somehow, this short post became a long one … how does that happen? Was I avoiding packing? Maybe …. Well, back to packing!

While packing, I discovered I had two different version of this DJ-3A Dispatcher brochure from 1959. Willys-Motors published this brochure as Form No. 59-06, but then republished it under Form No. 59-06 R1.

The biggest visual change happens on the folded out page, where an extra yellow box has been removed and the text header repositioned.

The biggest textual change seems to be the subtraction of the “cast-in-head intake manifolding” from the foldout page in the gray area to the back page of the revision brochure, burying it under the specifications section under ENGINE.

It’s not clear to me that it was worth reprinting the entire ad for that change, but maybe I’m missing something.

This is the unfolded interior page:

This is what I call the back side of the unfolded page:

This is another set of brochure-and-revised-brochure that I didn’t realize I had. The 1961 CJ-5 brochure Form No. 61-06 was revised to 61-06 R2 (I’ve not seen a 61-06 R1). One reason may have been the Specifications area misprint of the ring and pinion ratio of 5:38 on the original brochure, then updated to 4:27 on the revised one. There addition of the ventilating windshield verifies that it was still around as of 1961. There other changes are in red.

This is the unfolded interior:

This is the unfolded backside. For some reason, the spring specs were revised, too.

I’d forgotten that I’d bought this brochure until it arrived yesterday. So, here’s yet another 1950/51 Sedan Delivery brochure with the same brochure number of SD-73-MI–80M–350. This one has a blue front and a copper-colored(?) delivery sedan on the main page. I’ll get the page comparing these sedan delivery brochure updated after I post some others tomorrow.

This is how the folded front page looks:

This is the folded back page:

When unfolded vertically, this page appears:

When unfolded horizontally, this page appears highlighting the new Hurricane engine:

When completely unfolded, this page appears:

And, finally, this is how the back appears when unfolded:

Continue reading →

This Bulletin 114 from Ramsey Winch includes a good illustration of the underside of the jeep with a Ramsey X-200 PTO winch installed. A price listed was also included with the brochure. Below this post, you can see the truck and wagon brochure version of the X-200 winch.

This is the same X-200 winch pictured in the post above, but setup to function on the longer wheel-base Willys Jeep trucks and wagons. The is Ramsey Bulletin 115:

I spent all of Sunday packing up the office, so no Monday updates. I’m behind on comment responses, so bear with me.

Before packing up the jeep ‘toys’ yesterday, I took this photo. It’s not all the toys, but it is most of them. I never set out to collect toys, as I didn’t have the room. Still, somehow, I ended up with these. It’s probably good that I restrained myself; less toys to pack!

This four-page Ramsey Winch Kit brochure is labeled Bulletin 105.