emailNeed to contact me and don't have my email? Click on email button.
Welcome to eWillys.com, a website for vintage jeep enthusiasts. I update this website nearly every day with jeep deals, jeep history, interesting reader projects, jeep related info, and more.
These quick searches can help you find things on eBay. People list in the wrong categories all the time, so don't be surprised to see brochures in the parts area for example. This section used to be split into jeeps, parts and other categories, but recent changes to eBay will require this information to be recoded.
The links to posts below show jeeps grouped by models, condition, and other ways. Some of these jeeps are for sale and others have been sold. If you are unsure whether a vehicle is still for sale or not, email me at d [at] ewillys.com for more info.
There are plenty of interesting, unusual, historic and surprising stories related to Jeeps and their owners. In addition, some of these features have nothing to do with jeeps. This link will display all featured stories starting from the latest.
Looking for parts and not sure where to go? There are a variety of large and small new and used parts sellers both online and offline.
Importantly, the allure of buying a project jeep can be romantic. The reality of restoring a jeep can be quite different, expensive and overwhelming without the right tools and resources. So, tread carefully when purchasing a "project". If you have any concerns about buying a vintage jeep, or run across a scam, feel free to contact me for help, comments or concerns .
This article was published in the May 20, 1945, issue of the Spokesman Review. One fact that surprised me is that by 1945 only 2% of world’s farms were mechanized.
This photo and article appeared in the July 09, 1973, issue of the Longview Daily News. I don’t remember the Road Rebels Jeep Club nor can I remember its insignia. The tow bar on the front suggests this jeep was likely a trail and race jeep, if not also a road jeep. It was common to see the family jeep show up at races into the early 1980s. It doesn’t take too many breakdowns of the family jeep while racing to convince owners to build race-only jeeps.
“A hearty crowd turned out for the Jeep Play Day put on by the Road Rebels Jeep Club this weekend in conjunction with Kelso’s Hilander Summer Festival. The unidentified driver has all four wheels slinging mud, sand and water during his run over the course. Photographer Dave Fox captured the action with a camera setting of f16 at 500th of a second, which is considerably slower than the speed he used to get out of the way.”
UPDATE: Additional content has been added about Sandifur Motors.
Originally established in 1937, the Sandifur Motor Company out of Spokane, Washington, was operated by Charles and C. Paul Sandifur. Brothers and business partners, by 1938 the two men were involved in taxi cabs, used cars, life Insurance, and other business pursuits in the Spokane region.
The Sandifurs became a Willys distributor in the autumn of 1945 soon after the launch of the CJ-2A. An ad in the October 21, 1945, issue of the Spokesman Review confirms this.
October 21, 1945, ad published in the Spokesman Review
As best as I understand it, being a distributor meant Sandifur Motors could both sell jeeps and signup other dealers.
The company seems to have followed the standard line of advertising, as this 1947 farming ad shows:
As we’ll see in a moment, Sandifur was successful at selling jeeps, but I can’t imagine CJ-2A was very practical for farming in the Spokane region, in part due to the size of the farms. For example, my maternal grandparents obtained a 160 acre farm 35 miles southeast of Spokane on the small banks of Fighting Creek, Idaho, a place they won in a lottery around 1910, then secured by homesteading. In the 1920s they founded the local Fighting Creek store and operated one of the first phones in the area (we still have some of the books that documented the calls). They also made money logging the local forest and, after WWII, electrifying the area. Had they thought a jeep was practical, I believe they could have afforded to purchase one. Instead, they preferred to use tractors.
My family’s decision to abstain from buying a jeep did little to slow the success of Sandifur Motors. It’s possible the company was doing better selling wagons and trucks versus CJ-2As. I could imagine four wheel drive versions of the trucks and wagons being very handy navigating the endless forests and deserts of the Inland Empire area. This may also explain why both long-wheel base CJ-2As (likely the CJ-2Ls) and CJ-2As with 6ft extended beds were available for sale from both Spokane and Montana dealers (more on this in an upcoming post).
Here’s a 1949 ad promoting the wagon:
October 17, 1949, Spokesman Review
Whatever the company was selling, it was selling enough of them to justify new digs. In early 1951, the Willys dealer moved from its original location at W419 3rd Avenue, to W228 2nd Avenue in downtown Spokane:
February 27, 1951, in The Spokesman Review
(Given fireworks have arrived, this article seemed appropriate …) This August 07, 1949, article was published in the Spokesman Review out of Spokane, Washington, but it likely originated from a Wisconsin news report. The article mentions Nicolet National Forest, which is located in Northern Wisconsin, and the event was sponsored by E. W. Schwartz Motors out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One interesting statistic noted was that conservative estimates put the number of jeeps in service in state and national forests at over 1,000 jeeps by the summer of 1949.
This October 16, 1960, article introduced the Redlands Geckos Jeep Club out of Redlands, Calfiornia.
This article and photo appeared in the April 07, 1957, issue of the San Bernardino County Sun. The two jeeps shown are part of the 14-member Rialto Sidewinders Jeep Club. The two men pictured are W. H. Casaday(seated) and Bill Deal.
Doing some random searches, I learned that during the summer of 1946 several jeep races popped up across the country. One of them was very organized (#2), one was more of a performance (#1), one was impromptu (#4), and one provided no additional information (#3)
============================
In unrelated news from 1953, this Yakima Ridgerunners photo hit some newspapers across the country. The example below was published in the June 24, 1953, issue of the Spokesman-Review, out of Spokane, Washington. Chet Thompson and Wally Klingele, both names synonymous with the early days of the Ridgerunners, are shown practice-racing for a July 4th event.
This short article appeared in the June 24, 1946, issue of the Daily Times out of New Philadelphia, Ohio. I assume that the 30,000 production number relates to CJ-2As. Interestingly, 35% of jeeps were for ‘agricultural’ uses while 43% were heading to ‘industry’. The remaining 22% fell under the ‘miscellaneous’ category.
The threes article and photos appeared over a series of years. Each shows a different model of the Zamboni Ice Resurfacer. You can learn more about the jeep-chassis models in this post.
MODEL E CJ-3B Version: Based on the ice-delivery-chain-system design on the front, I’d say this is a CJ-3B version of Model E. You can learn more about the CJ-3B versions here.
December 09, 1956, Boston Sunday Globe.
MODEL E CJ-5 Version: This model was the last one to include the jeep body, in this case a CJ-5 body.
March 09, 1955, The Gazette out of Montreal, Canada.
MODEL F: This photo and caption shows a good example of the final jeep-related Zamoni Ice Resurfacer.
December 06, 1957, The Record-Argus out of Greenville, Pennsylvania.
Just this update for Tuesday.
April 22, 1956, Los Angeles Times. Strangely, this photo was published months after arriving in Los Angeles (they were likely here in late December 1955 or early January of 1956). See map below.
The trio began and ended their trip in San Paulo, Brazil. This map shows that they passed Los Angeles on their way home, then headed east towards New Orleans, the trio’s last stop in the United States.
Most folks are already familiar with this trip, but I wanted to add these news reports to the database of Operation Pineapple information. One of the articles noted that the three travelers did not try an American hamburger, because hamburger was fed to dogs in Brazil.
This first article was published shortly after Jan Stekly arrived in New Orleans, because he wasn’t allowed to travel through Mexico. It was published in the August 11, 1955, issue of the Shreveport Journal:
August 11, 1955, issue of the Shreveport Journal. Jan Stekly is shown in the photo.