UPDATE IV: Branden found this 1945 Parts List booklet that includes a prominent “J” logo. This is the most prominent use of the logo that I’ve seen. It’s not clear to me whether this booklet was introduced with the jeep in August of ’45 or a little later in ’45.

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UPDATE III (04/07/2019): Maury spotted the a “J” dealership sign example on this Miller Tools brochure:

UPDATE II: I’ve added two examples of ‘dark’ “J”s, dark (blue or black) background with white letters. Now that I think about it, I guess this is similar to the black and white newspaper versions.

CREDIT: Douglass, Neal. Harry Payne Motors, photograph, June 3, 1942; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth34338/m1/1/: accessed April 7, 2019), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. … MY NOTES: The photo year is more likely late 1947 or 1948.

From Willys World March-April 1991 issue.

UPDATE: This is best described as a working draft that Maury Hurt and I have constructed in the hopes of understanding Willys-Overland’s “J” logo better …. If you have input, please email me or add it in a comment at the bottom of the post.

In January of this year, Maury emailed me about a Willys/Cars•Trucks/Jeep logo that he was hoping to reproduce, wondering if I had any better examples of it. That simple email turned into a mission: Find out the history behind the logo.

I have one of these patches. Not sure who created them or when.

It turned out that we could find no articles or discussion about the evolution of the logo. So, we spent a month looking through old brochures and advertisements to develop a theory of what it should look like, when it was used, and why.

What’s the logo supposed to look like?

Our first challenge was to determine what the logo was supposed to look like. As these examples show, different fonts and slightly different looks were used in the printing of the logo.

Another patch example.

This was from a January 1946 magazine ad.

or even this one …

Our suspicion is that this is from overseas, possibly Australia? We don’t have a time frame on this one.

And, the list would not be complete without some matchbook covers:

How should the “J” look?

Continue reading →

This no reserve brochure is only $.99 (plus shipping) right now. It’s a good price on a nice brochure that folds out pretty large.

View all the information on ebay

“1954 Willy’s Jeep Station Wagon Original Sales Brochure. Condition is Used. Great condition! Shipped with USPS First Class Package.”

This ad by the American Thermos Bottle Company was published in the May 22, 1943, issue of the Saturday Evening Post. I believe the takeaway from this ad is, If Thermos products are good enough for workers building jeeps, than they are good enough for the average American. However, there seems to be a lack of evidence that Willys and Ford employees were using Thermos products.

Anyone ever run across one of these cranes. It was manufactured by the Construction Machinery Company out of Waterloo, Iowa.

Blaine shared these two ads from the February 1966 issue of Popular Science. The jeep ad appears on page 71 and the engine adapter ad was published on page 227.

In a column titled Underwater Puzzle: A  Post War Anecdote, an article shares the story (true?) about a lost jeep. This appeared in the December 1, 1944, issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

This ad was published in the February 7, 1942, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, pg. 31.

UPDATE: I’ve updated these images with corrections and four additional ads. You can a similar listing of Collier ads in black and white.  I’ve added two ads that only appeared in the CIO-News, one that only appeared in Colliers, and one Sat Evening Post ad that I’d missed.

Original Post (03/01/2019): I tried to find a listing of all the Willys-Overland ads and their issue dates that were published in the Saturday Evening Post during and after WWII. Unable to find any good resource, I spent the last three days surfing through 250 issues of the magazine using the Saturday Evening Post non-profit site, which costs $15 a year to use. Then I organized them in a way that I hoped would make it easier for me to study them. Hopefully, it’s handy for you all, too. For expediency and bandwidth size, I used low-resolution images to create the files below. Eventually, I’ll go back and replace them with hi res images so that everything is clearer when viewed more closely.

The ads started in May of 1942 (at least that’s the earliest I found) and were published on average once a month. All ads published up to November of 1945 were placed on the inside of the back cover.

On November 10, 1945, Willys-Overland formally introduced the CJ-2A to Saturday Evening Post readers with a more centralized, two-page ad. After that, one or two-page ads for the CJ-2A appeared until August of 1946, when the first wagon ad appeared in the magazine.