Fort Custer, Michigan, appears to have been a testing ground for Ford and Willys prototypes. Along with the articles below, there are press photos posted from years passed. You’ll also note that some of the press photos have captions that are printed identically, but pencil-marked up differently. It’s possible someone was selling those as originals when they may not have been.
Here’s an article and a photo showing a couple Ford GPs being run hard, originally printed in the March 09, 1941, issue of the Battle Creek Enquirer:
It didn’t take long for the offload vehicles to become a hit with soldiers. This article appears in the March 25, 1941, issue of the Detroit Free Press:
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And, just to set the record straight, at Fort Custer a jeep was a jeep and not a ‘peep’.
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These press photos have been gathered from older posts. First, a couple Willys MA photos from eBay:
This was posted on ebay in June 2017: “1942 Photo WW2 Era Fort Custer MI Versatile Jeep Military Push Ball Game Rare. You are bidding on an original Press Photo from a newspaper archive. The photograph measures 6×7 inches and is dated 9-25-1942.”
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