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Book Review: The Jeep (book) by the Olyslager Organisation

• CATEGORIES: Bantam-FordGP-WillysMA-EarlyJPs, Books, Features, Unique Jeeps, Unusual • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

I don’t know when or where it came from, but at some point my parents obtained a book simply titled “The Jeep“.  It was mostly a picture book, which as a young kid was perfectly fine with me.  I open and looked through it many, many times. Ok, I still open it ….

However, it wasn’t just a book with a few pics of jeeps you see everyday.  Instead, it’s a slim book full of a wide range of pictures.  Of course, there’s the standard bantam, mb, seep, gpw, etc. But, there’s also, for example, 3 images of the Willys/Nuffied modified airborne jeep, seen to the right (though not from the book — it’s from a russian site — the book images of the Willys/Nuffield are at the bottom of this post).

I bring this up, as I ran across a copy of the book at the Boise Library today.  So, I snapped a few images of the pictures with my digital camera (hence the poor quality – purchase the book to see them sharply) and will post a some of them.

I haven’t asked for permission to post them (I TRIED to, but can’t find the contact info for them), so I’ll add this pitch for the book.  This book is a must for any jeep nut.  While it’s a fairly small book with only 64 pages, the collectors prices (at amazon) were hovering around $45. It’s a perfect size for your kids.  The organization responsible for publishing the book is the Olyslager Foundation (link?), which has published a number of other cool books listed at the Open Library Project.

Now for some cool, but poor quality pics to wet your appetite…

One of my favorite sections of the book show how quickly a crate jeep can be put together.  The book documents this particular group only took 3 minutes and 31 seconds to put it togther.

Check out the rest of the pics …..

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Preproduction Civilian Jeeps — A Great Book!

• CATEGORIES: Books, Features This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

After reading the book review about “Preproduction Civilian Jeeps” from Jim Allen on Derek Redmond’s CJ-3B site (scroll to mid-page), I decided to purchase the book.  While I’m hesitant about purchasing jeep books, due to the fact that the images are often reprints of images I’ve already seen or that the text isn’t all that informative, Jim’s review intrigued me enough to spur me to action.

Thankfully, I was extremely happy with the book I received.  Frederic Coldwell’s Preproduction Civilian Jeeps manages to avoid the traps I mention above, producing a text that’s rich in information, details and images that are both unique and investigative.   In fact, the book is down right humbling.  I thought I knew jeeps pretty well, but reading this book taught me what I didn’t know about what I didn’t know.

Though each chapter is full of information, I think my favorite chapter was the final one, where Fred reveals how photographs have been altered by marketing staffs during the 40s so that the jeep that’s pictured in the photograph looks more like the Willys being sold to the public.   In some ways it’s a test; by the final chapter, has the reader learned enough to tell what the marketing department did to change the original images and why they did it?

I’m thinking I will paint in white ‘X2008’ on the rear bumper.  Read the book to learn why 🙂