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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 appeared in the June 9, 1957 issue of the Tuscaloosa News. The photo shows Frank and Helen Schreider , their dog Dinah, and their Ford GPA, La Tortuga. The report covers the period after their Pan American trip. Because of the journey, the Shreiders were elected to the Explorers Club. In the article they tease about going to Indonesia, which of course the eventually did.
It is always funning to hear the f-head described as a high performance power plant. The article was featured in the November 30, 1960, issue of Lakeland Ledger.
This and nine other Jeep News magazines are for sale, but they are in Australia. This puts them out of my budget. However, there’s some pics just good enough to see the photos and headlines. For example, in just the two pages below there are variety of examples of DJ-3A dispatchers, FCs, and other jeeps sold. Check out the 22 DJs sold to the Canadian Navy. Good stuff!
View all the information on eBay
In 1959 Belleview Manufacturing introduced an electric winch. The company sold them (6000lb and 8000lb versions) through Warn Industries, since they manufactured other products for Warn also. However, based on the ad below, they may have marketed them to other resellers, since the ad doesn’t mention Warn at all.
The ad below was in the March 9, 1967, issue of the Sundance Times, a Wyoming newspaper. By the time the ad appeared, Warn had already purchased all the Belleview Manufacturing Stock, as the small caption below Thurston Warn’s photo indicates (which is on eBay). The next year, Thurston Warn became President of Warn.
This 1955 July Willys News article highlights the naming of a Navajo baby named Jeep Chee. My attempts to learn more about Jeep Chee weren’t very successful. I did find this odd movie script. There is a more extensive article about Gwen and Marvin Walter in the July 1958 issue of Desert Magazine.
I found this interesting article from the St. Petersburg Times in 1994. Island Cruisers was a Clearwater, Florida, company that refurbished old right-hand drive postal jeeps for export to island countries where people drive on the right hand side.
Jan and Robin Stach started the company. By the time this article was written, the company had sold 35 jeeps to the Bahamas, Grenada, Aruba, the Cayman Islands and Cancun. They were generally used for rentals. The company had another 30 jeeps in process. The Stachs feel that demand was huge and they hoped to mature into a company capable of producing 500 jeeps a month.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find any additional information on how successful (or not) or for how long the company operated.
Note: Another company started about the same time on the west coast called Safari-Kars
Steve shared this funny story about the seizure of jeeps in Paris to put a halt to free rides for pretty French girls. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3316764/posts
According to this story, Buddy Cowger lost the use of his legs due to cyanide poisoning. That didn’t stop him from driving the backroads of Utah in search of Uranium. He was a friend of Charlie Steen, a famous Uranium hunter out of Moab.
Field Marshall Sir Thomas Albert Blamey was memorialized in a monument in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne, Australia. It shows him standing while gripping part of a jeep windshield. The way a July 1955 Willys News described it, I thought there’d be a whole jeep!
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Blamey_statue_Melbourne.jpg Blamey is mounted on a jeep instead of the traditional horse. This conveys Blamey’s role in the technological transformation of the Army that occurred during his years of service
Pfc. Harold B. Whiting of Plainfield, New Jersey, built an award-winning model jeep that in 1946 that landed temporarily on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This article was featured in the February 2, 1946, issue of the Afro-American. I wonder where that model is now??
