This eight-page Willys-Overland Sign Program sold on eBay for $38 (plus $4 shipping) late night. The seller only provided two pics, so I was unsure if this would be worth the money. Given the front-page design of the brochure, I’d guess this was produced around 1949. The design is reminiscent of other Willys-Overland catalogs of the era (see examples at the bottom).

“This is a 9 X 11 8 page brochure of WILLYS -OVERLAND SIGN PROGRAM  FACTORY APPROVED shows products offered to dealers from Neon Products of Lima Ohio some slight scuffing on the covers…also has a order blank”

A 5-foot version of the Willys Service Sign sold out of Buda, Texas, for $400 back in 2014. It was likely sign model #WO-111 (the large sign pictured on the left side of the left page). These are the only two interior pages that were included in the auction ad:

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Similar covers from 1949 that have the style AND the WO logo. For example, Barney has this 1949 Parts List catalog listed on eBay:

There’s this 1949 Jeepster owners manual:

And, this is a 1948 CJ-3A Owners Manual on eBay:

And this 1948 CJ-2A (with envelope) owner’s manual on eBay:

This is a great vintage ad for the Jeep Caravan ‘Free Show’. That’s a nice touch with the fire jeep shooting water up the side of the ad. This appeared in the November 6, 1947, issue of the News and Observer out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

This sold yesterday on eBay for $51 +shipping. I gave up bidding on it, because I couldn’t tell how many pages there were. I was concerned there were only four and didn’t want to get into a bidding war over it (I got another cool brochure instead).

Thanks to Andy for taking photos of his oversize truck brochures. These are framed and behind glass, so he had an understandably difficult time getting good photos. The first two are domestic brochures. The third is a French version of this Willys truck brochure.

UPDATE: Here’s an updated version of the post that separates the 1950-1952 oversize truck brochure from the sedan delivery wagon brochures with similar designs.

Originally Published Feb 26, 2021: I was inspired to purchase and learn more about the brochures below after realizing that a poster I saw during a visit at Dave Antram’s place in 2013. Here’s a photo of it:

While I originally thought these brochures were all printed in early 1950, I’m now less certain, as Colin pointed out that #1 (4WD Willys Truck) mentions “Key Starting”, which appeared in 1952. In addition, one of the truck brochures has “1951” printed on the subheading. I suspect we’ll never get firm evidence on the publish dates of these:

You can view the original scans using the following links:

1. The upper right New Willys Sedan Delivery with — Hurricane 4 Cylinder Engine (Copper?)
2. The upper left New Willys Sedan Delivery with — Hurricane 4 Cylinder Engine (blue) 
3. The lower left Sedan Delivery Export brochure with the “New” Hurricane (red)
4. The lower right Sedan Delivery with “Famous” Hurricane is here (blue): 

And now the trucks from the same period. I don’ have full scans of the bottom two trucks:

1. The upper left NEW 4WD WILLYS Truck brochure
2. The upper right NEW 1/2 Ton WILLYS Truck brochure
3. The lower left is of a French 4WD Willys Truck brochure:
4. The lower right brochure is a 1951 Willys 4WD Truck Brochure: 

Then there is this oddball Willys Delivery Sedan brochure that has the same front as the brochure above, but unfolds differently, is black and white, and has content arranged differently on the interior pages:

Over the past year, thanks to the pandemic and my Mother-in-Law’s health issues, we’ve traveled less. This has left more money to purchase vintage jeep documents. I purchased enough that I got behind on organizing them, so packing has been a good excuse to spend the past two days restructuring the binders so everything can fit.

There are binders of company brochures, 3rd party special equipment brochures, magazine articles, dealer newspapers, catalogs, and ads. This effort has been fueled by reader donations and ad revenue, along with gifts of from readers, so thanks to everyone out there! I see myself as the temporary custodian of these. My hope is to donate this collection in the future so others can benefit later. Much of the information on that table has been published on eWillys.

The binder on the lower right contains issues of Kaiser-Willys News, Willys News, and Jeep News produced from 1953-1963. I’d estimate I have roughly half of the issues produced. It also contains a couple issues of the mid-1950 Globe-trotter magazines (I believe there were more than 20 plus issues of those produced ..  a guy in the midwest told me a few years ago he had two dozen or so he wanted to sell, but wanted $1000 for them; I couldn’t justify that on my budget at the time). 

The set of binders shown below houses only domestic jeep-related brochures produced by Willys-Overland and Willys Motors (so roughly 1945-1962 … so, for example, there are no spec equipment brochures in those binders). I’d call this the core of my collection as I’m attempting to get all of these I can, including revisions to certain brochures (see next two posts). Unfortunately, some of the early brochures do not fit into the 8″x11″ binders, so I also have some large portfolio binders to house them (and large print ads, some posters, and other items) as well.

One goal of this collection had been to write an advertising history of Willys-Overland/Willys-Motors/Kaiser-Jeep, which showed the progression (and missteps) from the jeep as a 4-in-1-tool, to a jack-of-all-trades utility vehicle(s), to jeeps-as-a-fun toys, which the journey is the reward.

Part of the reason for making the smaller history posts over the years has been to write such a book in small parts; well, that and to determine if there was anything to write about. Because of this approach, there is plenty I can assemble from the site posts at this point to create a book framework, but there is still much more work to be done on that type of book.

At this point in life, I don’t want to write a book and simultaneously run the website, since for me that’s a 7-day a week proposition. Because, once I start writing, my head is so busy with ideas, and the need to write them down, that I can’t not write. I become obsessive, which is really the only way I can get big projects done (perhaps others can multi-task better?). After SLAG, which was two solid years of research and writing, I had to take a long break as I was mentally exhausted.

So, will a book arise out of all this? I’d say it’s a strong maybe, with a litany of qualifiers (Ann’s health, demand of the new home and property, and others). Whatever happens, I’ll keep collecting these brochures …

Somehow, this short post became a long one … how does that happen? Was I avoiding packing? Maybe …. Well, back to packing!