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Welcome to eWillys.com, a website for vintage jeep enthusiasts. I update this website nearly every day with jeep deals, jeep history, interesting reader projects, jeep related info, and more.
These quick searches can help you find things on eBay. People list in the wrong categories all the time, so don't be surprised to see brochures in the parts area for example.
The links to posts below show jeeps grouped by models, condition, and other ways. Some of these jeeps are for sale and others have been sold. If you are unsure whether a vehicle is still for sale or not, email me at d [at] ewillys.com for more info.
There are plenty of interesting, unusual, historic and surprising stories related to Jeeps and their owners. In addition, some of these features have nothing to do with jeeps. This link will display all featured stories starting from the latest.
Looking for parts and not sure where to go? There are a variety of large and small new and used parts sellers both online and offline.
Importantly, the allure of buying a project jeep can be romantic. The reality of restoring a jeep can be quite different, expensive and overwhelming without the right tools and resources. So, tread carefully when purchasing a "project". If you have any concerns about buying a vintage jeep, or run across a scam, feel free to contact me for help, comments or concerns .
This April of 1972 article in Boy’s Life Magazine tells the story of the Boys Scouts work project on the Naches Trail in the Cascade Mountains just north of Mt. Rainier in conjunction with the Pacific Northwest Four-Wheel-Drive Association. I was not there (that I remember), but our club, the Wandering Willys, including my father, was there to help ferry the Boy Scouts to the Naches Trail.
You can read the article online here
This story appeared in the August 12, 1950, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, page 56. It highlights the challenges of being an Army jeep driver.
A November 11, 1949, article in the Saturday Evening Post included these two pics of an Auto Club of Southern California CJ-2A.
Most of you have probably seen this, but for documentation purposes, this high-flying kid in a toy jeep made the cover the January 30, 1943, issue of Collier’s Magazine. There are a couple pretty cheap issues on eBay.
This photo was published in the November 20, 1943, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.
UPDATE: The complete set of plans for the Wander Wagon is shown below. Previously, I’d only had the first part of the build scanned.
In 1948 Popular Homecraft Magazine did a two article series on the construction of a home built Jeep Station Wagon. The name for the custom wagon was the Wander Wagon Junior. The project was shared with readers over two issues, the 1948 Jan-Feb issue and the 1948 Mar-Apr issue. I was finally able to locate a copy of the Mar-Apr issue, so now the full build is shown below.
PART I: January-February 1948 issue:
These pics were part of an article in the November 11, 1945, issue of Colliers.
Steve Bovee just contacted me about the upcoming 70th anniversary of the De Anza Jeep Cavalcade, aka Hemet-Borrego Jeep Cavalcade.
He writes, “Willys Jeeps and Flat Fenders Welcome … Next month will be the 70th anniversary of the De Anza Jeep Cavalcade aka Hemet-Borrego Jeep Cavalcade. Some 400 vehicles, mostly Willys Jeeps, went on this epic off-roading event April 2, 1949.
To celebrate the anniversary a few flat fenders will be getting together on April 6th and will be retracing the original route, as much as possible. There might be several starting points, but the main one will be in Hemet and as in the first run we will travel south through Battista Canyon, stop in Anza for a snack and photo shoot and then head out to Coyote Canyon. Coyote Canyon part of the trail is for the brave at heart and there is only one way in and one way out so I’m sure some of us will stop there.”
You can read more about the original Cavalcade in this July 1979 article from Desert Magazine (below), which can also be found on Archive.org.
This Collier’s cartoon ran in the July 31, 1943, issue of Collier’s Magazine, page 56.
UPDATE 3: I’m taking Wednesday (03/06/2019) off of posts to write an article, so here’s an oldie, but a goodie.
UPDATE 2: Daniel Strohl over at Hemmings provided a solid background update about Wally Cohn.
“Born in 1924 in Germany, his father and stepmother sent him to the Chicago area in 1937 both to live with family and to escape the increasingly anti-Semitic mood in Germany. After Kristallnacht, his older brother Herman, his father Siegfried, and his stepmother joined him in Chicago. Walter flew 30 missions for the U.S. Army Air Corps as a bombardier during the war, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and a Bronze Star and rising at least to the rank of Sergeant. After the war, he served as a member of the chief justice’s staff during the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, then returned to the United States and founded W&W Foreign Auto Parts in Blue Island, Illinois.”
UPDATE: A reader named Clint just determined what type of vehicle Wally was using — A 1936-1940 Opel Olympia. Here are two links to images: Link 1 & Link 2. Thanks Clint!
ORIGINAL POST published in 2010: I ran across the images shown below and others. I didn’t think much of them until I looked more closely. It appears the builder, who I assume is Wally Cohn, has merged a 1936-1940 Opel Olympia with a MB to create, arguably, the first Jeepster-like vehicle, except it is four wheel drive. The ‘Wally’ appears to use the entire jeep drive train. If you look in back, you’ll even see this car can tow a trailer!
Who is Wally Cohn? I have no idea. I can’t seem to find anything about him, other than his name was Wally Cohn and he was nicknamed the Jeep King by photographer Walter Sanders.
Photographer Walter (Wally) Sanders worked for Life Magazine from 1944 to 1961. After growing up and leaving Germany for the US in 1937, he returned in early 1946 and lived the rest of his life in Europe, mostly in Munich. You can learn more about his biography here.
Because Walter was in Europe during December of 1946, and because these photos were snapped during that month, and because of Wally’s uniform (which Bob noted is an Army Airforce Uniform), I have concluded that Wally Cohn was a member of the armed services trying to merge cars and jeeps into a Wally vehicle of some kind (note the name Wally is displayed prominently on the dash in one of the pics).
This would be a great collector’s item — and a cool jeep too!
Canada’s Maclean’s Magazine featured an illustrated jeep on the cover of its October 1, 1945, issue. Though there’s no specific article about the jeep, you can read the entire issue online (and many other issues) here: https://archive.macleans.ca/issue/19451001#!&pid=0_1
As a side note, though Canada and the US (and Great Britain) all declared war against Japan on December 8th, 1941, on December 7th, 1941, four hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 2000 Canadian troops along with 12,000 Chinese (and British?) troops, attacked a Japanese force of 52,000 strong in Hong Kong. The fighting lasted for three weeks. The Japanese prevailed, but they suffered significant losses.
UPDATE II: Bob Westerman shared a few cage photos he’s found during his research:
UPDATE: Dan tracked down this detailed explanation of the Squirrel Cage: http://weaponews.com/weapons/16209-a-system-for-increasing-the-patency-of-the-squirrel-cage-usa.html
The November 9, 1948, issue of the Evening Star ran a short article on the Squirrel Cage. A February 1949 issue of Mechanix Magazine ran the same photo (and it’s more clear).
The Evening Star photo and caption:
The Modern Mechanix photo and caption:
During a 75,000 mile adventure between 1940 and 1942 Life photographer George Rodger photographed the growing war across Africa, Europe, and Asia. During the latter part of his adventures he found himself using, then abandoning, Two Ford GPs sent to the Chinese as he and his fellow adventurers escaped Burma. He reported on these adventures, through photos, in the August 10, 1942, issue of Life Magazine.
UPDATE: This Combat Bulletin video was shared by Dee Cook on G503 FB. From 14:07 to 15:05.
The photos below are snapshots from the above video. They resemble the jeep shown below that was built by Wayne K. Pike. It was built by members of the 9th Service Squadron at the 13th Army Air Base on the island of Moratai. Note that it has a chrome/stainless trim strip absent from the car featured in the Popular Mechanics article below.
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ORIGINAL POST FEBRUARY 11, 2013: Bob alerted me to this first picture. Then, we started going through the whole December 1945 issue and found all kinds of jeep references. You can view the entire issue on Google.
Dec 1945 Popular Mechanics Page 6 Streamlined Jeep
Dec 1945 Popular Mechanics Page 72 Jeep with Odd Body
Dec 1945 Popular Mechanics Page 77 Men using Jeep like a plow horse
Dec 1945 Popular Mechanics Page 73 Men us jeep to fix propeller
Dec 1945 Popular Mechanics Page 70 Fixing Jeep Frame
A May 1939 article shown below from Boy’s Life adds to the evidence that the use of the term Jeep existed prior to the introduction of the Bantam BRC in September of 1940.
By November 1940, the term “jeep” was being applied to the Bantam jeep (and/or the Willys Quad, delivered in mid-November), according to court records, months before the delivery of the Ford “GP” model in March of 1941 ((the Ford Pygmy was delivered to Holabird near the end of November of 1940).
To me this opens up a question. Was the P=80″ wheel base a chance coincidence? Or was Ford cognizant that the new 4×4 vehicles were being called jeeps, so they purposefully took advantage of that to use the “P” to spell the onomatopoeia-initialism “gp” or “geepee” or “geep” as part of the delivery contract? I suppose Ford had a designation that O=70″ wheel base and Q=90″? If so, I’ve not personally seen those designations documented.
Now, modern articles call the Pygmy the “Pygmy GP-1” (or similar), giving it credit for being the first Ford GP. But, I have yet to see any documentation that Ford or anyone else was calling the Pygmy a “GP”.
In fact, two articles from 1940 indicate the new Ford recon car is called only a Pygmy and that more pygmies will be delivered in the future. See the middle and right column articles on this page (http://www.memorialmuseum.org/displaysmilitary-jeeps/item/ford-pygmy) (note that the 1969 article on the left hand side of the page does designate the vehicle GP-1, but again, that’s a much later article).
My guess is that the GP designation was more strategic than the innocent explanation of G=”Government” and P=80″ suggests. I’d welcome evidence showing the Pygmy was labeled a FORD GP from any kind of article or document from the late 1940s. (maybe this issue has been hashed out previously and I’m late to the party???)
In the meantime, here’s the Boy’s Life article (you can read it online).
UPDATE: Terry pointed out that this same vehicle, a SPEN self-sustaining motion picture unit, appears in a Willys Industrial Equipment book brochure. Here it is below:
Talk about a rare jeep. Anyone ever seen one of these (if there are any left). It’s a specially outfitted jeep for the State Department for carrying the story of America to the world. The first pics below were from a September 1949 issue of Popular Science, while the newspaper article was carried in the Sunday Star on Sunday, April 17, 1949.
From the September 1949 issue of Popular Science:
From the Sunday Star, April 17, 1949:
A Popular Science March 1954 photo and caption highlighted the use of a jeep engine as the driver of a centrifugal pump that creates a water jet capable of powering an aquatic mower.
This one-page article was published in the February 1947 issue of Mechanix Magazine.
UPDATE ON ME: Like Lazarus, I have risen once again to rejoin the living! Whoo hoo!
For my first post back, I doubt Willys Overland could have paid a reviewer for a better review of their wagon. This review was featured in the February, 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated that I bought off of eBay.
Also, thanks go to several readers who donated funds prior to Christmas. This allowed me to purchase multiple items, including all the brochures/articles featured since Christmas Eve.
This article about exploring southern Utah in a jeep was published in the October 1958 issue of Sunset Magazine. You’ll see a nod to Kent Frost’s guide company and a photo of the front of one of his CJ-5s.
Not many of these ads left.
View all the information on eBay
“HIS IS A COLOR ORIGINAL 1947 MAGAZINE AD FOR THE JEEP-WILLYS OVERLAND MOTORS THE GREENKEEPER’S BEST FRIEND IS THE UNIVERSAL JEEP….IT IS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION,MEASURING 8″ X 11″..POSTAGE ON 1 ITEM IS THE SAME PRICE AS FOR 1000….PLEASE VIST MY E-BAY STORE….NOSTALGIA AIRWAYS…..”
I”ve never documented one of these.
View all the information on eBay
“Vintage April 6 1945 Army Day Review RARE Roosevelt, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton
Ads:
Grace Line Ships
Pass & Seymour Inc
Tube Turns
RCA
Fashion Frocks Parachutes
Monroe Shocks
Cummings Machine Works
Eastern Air Lines
Magnavox
Republic Aviation
Wisconsin Honey Farm
Ward LaFrance
Continue reading
Just a few updates today …
The August 1954 issue of People Magazine did a two-page article on the women who drove jeeps for Willys Motors. It looks like they are testing a series of M-38A1s in the photos.
View all the information on ebay
UPDATE: This was originally posted in April of 2013. I just found a larger version of the illustration by Mort Künstler.
“Original January, 1967 For Men Only magazine. This 8.5 X 11 in. (approx.) 90+ page magazine is in good condition. It shows a couple transporting a Jeep across a gorge while being shot at. See scan.”
Photo from the Denver Post. Both Life Magazine and the Denver Post covered the event. Note the white wagon above. It appears in a couple of the color photos below.
UPDATE: These Life Magazine photos and some other information was originally posted in 2011. A couple days ago I confirmed that these photos were from a special 1959 Jeep Calvacade, organized as one of many events during the 1859-1959 Rush to the Rockies Centennial Celebration.
I’d love to get a digital copy of the below brochure if anyone has one.
Some folks attached these flags to their rigs.
I hope to gather more information about the Jeep Cavalcade soon. In the meantime, I’ve only been able to document that one of these photos appeared in print in the December 28, 1959, issue of Life Magazine (the one below).
