Barry Thomas’ photo of this farm working CJ-5 landed on the cover of this month’s Farm Collector Magazine. Congrats to Barry! (it is great photo).

If you have a subscription to Farm Collector Magazine, you should be able to read Barry’s article, too.

UPDATE: This post was published on eWillys November 15, 2014. I don’t normally post whole articles, but there is a great deal of interesting information within it. I’m reposting this today because there is some additional information about Mr. Clement Miniger and his Auto-Lite company leading a syndicate to buyout John North Willys’ stock in 1929 (Learn more about Miniger And Willys Light here).

A variety of pre August 1946 CJ-2As in different colors waiting to be shipped from Willys-Overland’s Toledo plant.

This fascinating article was published in the August 1946 issue of Fortune magazine. It’s a LONG article that covers the history of Willys Overland Corporation from it’s bankruptcy in the early 1930s to it’s post-war market positioning. There is not much information specifically about jeeps, nor many jeeps photos. But, if you want to understand how the corporate structure evolved, it’s a good article.

One particular chart published in the article was Willys’ research on paved roads. The company felt that jeeps would be very popular in outer countries, due both to the brand and the lack of paved roads. To meet that demand, Willys planned to export 25% of all jeeps.

WILLYS-OVERLAND

THIS JEEP-RIDING AUTO INDEPENDENT IS TAKING NEW LEASES ON LIFE AND ITS OWN REAL ESTATE • THE BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM ARE DOING FINE

ln the years between the depression and the second world war, the once great Willys-Overland Co. clung by its nails to a niche in the U.S. automobile market. Gamely, it tried to sell the public a mousy little car, with a tough, four-cylinder engine, which was the cheapest thing on the road to run. Itself battered into receivership and reorganization by the depression, Willys had the patently sensible idea that such a car, guaranteed to get people from here to there at a minimum expenditure for fuel and upkeep, would be a blessing to a hard-pressed public that had not been similarly served since the demise of the models T and A Ford. But the public was proud, if poor, and more conscious of the millinery than the engineering of a car. When it had to buy cheaply it found the used-car market much more tempting. During most of those years Willys’ production ranged below the break-even point. bln 1940, a mere 27,000 cars were built. Now Willys-Uverland is coming up for the postwar round with a product line still topped by a light passenger car-with a four or a six-cylinder engine, buyer’s choice. It will probably be as cheap to buy, give or take a few dollars, as any 1947 car on the market, and possibly less expensive to operate and support than any of its competitors. And though it will be considerably more stylish, inside and out, than the prewar Willys, it will have, at most, simple good looks rather than breath-taking beauty. If that were the whole story, one might wonder why some people think Willys-Overland is an exciting proposition among the auto independents today, and why some mighty big boys in the automobile industry appear to be sparring for position in the peculiar, complicated Willys-Overland hierarchy.

Unquestionably Willys has fresh charms. To name four:
1) The tough, four-cylinder motor that was the bread-and-butter item in the prewar Willys is the same motor that powered the Army Jeep, which became an international byword during the war. As the largest producer, by far, of the Jeep, Willys-Overland became the beneficiary of this enormous, war-born prestige (and also added a tidy sum to its treasury). Ten days after V-J day, Willys was in production on its civilian or Universal Jeep, of which it had sold around 28,000 by June 1, despite plant shutdowns totaling eighty-three days owing to strikes in suppliers’ plants.

2) Under way at its giant Toledo plant is a Jeep-inspired line of Willys utility vehicles including (a) an all-steel, all-purpose station wagon, (b) a sedan delivery truck, and (c) a low-weight, medium-duty truck with a combination four and two-wheel drive. All are powered by an improved four-cylinder Jeep engine and feature the Jeep snub nose and square fenders. All will be produced in 1946, and can be run through the same assembly line if necessary.

3) Because the rugged, lightweight vehicles in the Willys line are peculiarly suited to the exigencies of foreign motoring, in which the paucity of paved roads and the steep price of gasoline are forbidding factors, the company has decided to throw 25 per cent of its production into export. The development of a foreign market of such proportions is steadying to the seasonal economy of an automobile company. And Willys’ new top management is richly experienced in the export field.

4) Finally, many an economist, foreseeing an era of inflation, high taxes, and high gasoline costs, will agree that the hour in the oiiing is ripe for an automobile that places operating economy above fashion appeal. Willys is confident that its traditional economy car is, at last, accurately attuned to the times, and that its 1947 passenger model can bite into a solid and sustained market, both here and abroad.

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UPDATE: Many folks probably haven’t seen this older post …

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UPDATED January 20, 2014: Here’s a jeep trip in 1955 that was undertaken after one of the trip’s members read the below article in National Geographic.

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Originally Posted October 23, 2013: 

This spot is now a couple hundred feet under water. Learn more about the Crossing of the Fathers here: http://www.onlineutah.com/crossinghistory.shtml

In 1949 a joint expedition between the National Geographic Society and New York Explorers Club decided to be the first explorers, by vehicle, to enter the Escalante area of Utah. Accompanying the explorers were two jeeps and, fortunately for us, cameras. Their story, “The First Motor Sortie into Escalante Land”, appeared in the September 1949 issue (pages 169-204).

You can find a variety of inexpensive issues of the September 1949 National Geographic Magazine on eBay. If you are a fan of Southern Utah, this is a neat article.

For the first part of the trip, which began in Cannonville, Utah, the explorers traveled along part of the Cottonwood Road route we drove this past March. Their first big find was the arch we now know as the Grovesnor Arch, which the explorers officially named after the President of the National Geographic Society. What surprised me was that there are pictures showing the group on top of the arch with flags as if they’d conquered the moon. To be fair, I imagine it was a pretty challenging climb.

Note the explorers at the top of the Grosvenor arch.

From there, the party headed south as far as the Colorado River to an area now flooded by Lake Powell. So, some of the areas in the photos are no longer possible to see.

Below are only the photos that include the red and yellow CJ-2As that accompanied the explorers:

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The new issue of the Dispatcher Magazine has been released. Jim Allen’s article on the Jeep Creep and other prototypes in the late 1950s was very interesting (something I’ve never documented), as were the restoration articles on the Tonka Surreys and the Jeepster Convertible. As always, there’s lots of good stuff in this issue!

Tom McCahill reviews the reviewed the Jeepster and Station Wagon in the January 1950 issue of Mechanic Illustrated . He liked the new four-wheel-drive wagon, but was less a fan of the Jeepster.

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The February 1957 issue of Science and Mechanics introduced readers to the FC-150 with this short article.

This Forbes November 15, 1944, article titled “Will the Jeep Invade Peacetime Markets” is a pretty sober look at the reality of the WWII jeep. That’s probably because the author, Francis “Frank” Fenn, was the former President of American Bantam at the time the Bantam BRC was developed (one person argued that Frank was the actual father of the jeep).

With tweaks to the basic WWII jeep, Fenn predicted the CJ could do quite a bit, but would never make a good around-town or travel car due to it’s rough ride and basic functions. He predicted, rightly, that it would take a quite a bit of engineering for the vehicle to meet the average family’s on-road needs.

The Sumer 2020 Dispatcher Magazine arrived in my mailbox this weekend. Jim Allen’s feature article on the Jeepster Commando designs was particularly interesting. I knew there were a variety, but I didn’t know there were this many!