Mark wrote me to share with me one of Houston’s unique cultural events.  They were the originating city for the Art Car Parade. Houston launched the parade in 1988 with 40 cars and a couple thousand spectators.  Today the number of cars in the parade will top 250, with around 250,000 spectators. The 2011 Houston Art Car Parade will be held this weekend.

Naturally, did a few searches to see if I could any jeeps, but I only found two.  So, below them are a few curious creations that have appeared over the years.

Here we have the PEEP JEEP, a jeep decorated with peeps.

This appears to be a bengal jeep of some sort:

And here are some random pics:

You might have seen one or another of these images illustrated by Normal Rockwell, but did you know there’s a story as well?  Published in the January 29th, 1944, edition of the Saturday Evening Post, the story was written by Wilbur Schram, who went on to be called the “father of communication studies” in the United States. The story appears to be a fun, fictional tale of a jeep named Wilbur and his exploits.  Unfortunately, I could not find any copy of the full text anywhere on the net.

Here is the best snapshot I found on Flickr about the article.

Here are closeups also found on Flickr

Alex spotted this illustration of a rocking jeep a long time ago.  Thanks for sharing it.  I think these would sell . . .

I’m not quite sure where this image originated, but it was the only ‘Willys Tattoo’ I could find when I did a search on it (for no particular reason other than curiosity).  Everything is backwards, so I’m wondering if it was taken using a mirror.