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1944: Mayor Heine buys the first Jeep for Civilians

September 2, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Bantam-FordGP-WillysMA-EarlyJPs, Features, Old News Articles, Women & Jeeps This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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UPDATE 3: Cblynch posted an update to this information on g503.com site.  He notes that Randy Withrow in Alabama owns the below GP and also owns all the original photos.  Apparently, the woman driving the GP died a few years ago. (Thanks Simon).  Also, you can see an additional photo from Bergs yard in this thread. Finally, to GP1942 from G503, I’m glad you are enjoying the content, but please add a link saying you found the info at ewillys when copying and pasting it into other sites.

UPDATE 2: After further review, and based on Lindsay’s comments, I would say that the first BRC is a BRC-40.  The TWO jeeps in front of that are BRC-60s (made after the original BRC prototypes and before the BRC-40).


UPDATE:  A reader named Lindsay was kind enough to provide an update to this story:

Lindsay writes, “An interesting note about the article with the mayor that purchased the GP in 1944. That vehicle was tracked down by Ken Hake years ago and restored several years later. The 3 smaller photo’s at the bottom bottom right is a photo of Bergs Jeep parts in Chicago note the first one is a Bantam BRC 40 the one in the front of that is a very early “round nose” BRC of which only one still exists and belongs to the Smithsonian. This proves that round nose BRC’s were released and sold to the public. I sure would like to find one of those in a barn.”

The military started selling jeeps to civilians in 1944.  By all accounts, Mayor Heine, of Lucas Kansas, and his family were the very first purchasers of a Military jeep for civilian use.  Here is a Life Magazine Article about the Heines and the related images from the January 4, 1944, issue of Life Magazine (page 24 & 27).  I bet they wished the jeep came with a top and a heater!

NOTE:  The jeep below is a Ford GP

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Fred Heine would late purchase an early CJ-2A, as captured in these press photos that landed for sale on eBay in 2014:

This is a second press photo of a photo sold two months ago. The caption is the same, though it has slightly different marks.

“1945 Press Photo Hutchinson Kansas Fred Heine buys Jeep for farm, H Woodring”

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For comparison, here is what the photo and caption from October 2014 looked like:

1945-09-29-first-jeep-buy1

1945-09-29-first-jeep-buy2

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The 135 MPH Jeep Test

August 8, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Features, Old Images, Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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As I mentioned a couple days ago, a reader named Dave spotted this article and wanted to share it with readers.  The article published in the 1960 edition of All American Word follows the All American Engineering Company Testing the air drop of a jeep by a pallet rather than via a parachute.  To test this concept, the AAE built a special vehicle to mimic the landing of a jeep atop a pallet at speeds of 135mph.  As you can see, the test was successful (at least the one captured in the photos).

Dave writes,”I was in Georgetown, DE recently which is a small town on the DelMarVa peninsula, and I ran across this very interesting use for a VEC CJ2A! I think it might fit your recent “museum” series of posts and I’m sure that your eagle-eyed readers will immediately recognize the historical relevance of this column shift speed demon! Apparently, this was a precursor to what is now known as LAPES or the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System which is still taught, practiced and used today by our Military for forward area resupply missions. I watched C130 crews practice this (with varying levels of success)! at Whiteman AFB in western Missouri in the late 80’s. Fortunately by that point they were only destroying HMMWVs and military pickup trucks! The 8 of 10 or so operations that were succesful were really cool and you could certainly see the advantages of this type of operation.”

Click on the link below to see some closeups

Continue reading →

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Mr. White Brings Home His Jeep

February 28, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Features, Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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Here’s a short article about a Veteran of WWII named Mr. M C White.  He was assigned a Jeep with only 7 miles on it during the war and proceeded to drive it for 3 years, through battles all over Europe.  I don’t see a period at the end of the last sentence, so I suspect this article might be longer than it appears?

This article is from the front page of the July 19, 1946 issue of the Mt. Pleasant, Ia, Newspaper [The Mt. Pleasant News].  Thanks to Bruce for the article.

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Dec 22, 1941 — A Reporter rides in a Jeep

February 25, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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This is an article Bruce found in the Charleston Daily Mail from Dec 22, 1941.  Note that the reporter calls this vehicle both a Jeep and a Bantam Buggy, suggesting that readers would be familiar with both terms. In fact, the US was only in the ware a couple weeks by the time this article aired.

Here’s a PDF Version that’s probably easier to read.

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Early Colombian Jeep Ads — Courtesy of Sebastian

January 31, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Advertising & Brochures, Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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Sebastian’s friend Esteban found these great ads.

Sebastian writes, “Here are some vintage willys ads published in Colombia during the late 40’s and early 50’s. The one showing the CJ-3B appeared on a newspaper in 1953. The other ads were published in “Revista Semana”[ed. note: That is Spanish for ‘Week Magazine’ – I hope I got he right web link?], one of the oldest and most prestigious magazines in Colombia. A friend of mine, actually one of the best men in my wedding (Esteban Ucros), found these pictures. For work purposes (nothing related with Willys), he was researching the old archives of “Semana” (hard copies) and ran across these ads. He sent me high resolution pictures and I just did some edits.”

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Newspaper Articles from 1945 introducing the Jeep

January 18, 2010 • CATEGORIES: Features, Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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UPDATE: The links to the PDFs are fixed.

Among the digitized items Bruce has sent me comes these articles.  In this one, from the Hammond Times, July 23, 1945, Willys Overland introduces the new Post-War Jeep.  What’s interesting is that it’s neither an “ad” nor is it really an article.  You can view the entire PDF here.

Even more interesting was the pricing decision.  These new Willys would cost $1000, a price not set by Willys Overland, but instead by the Office of Price Administration (OPA).  This information comes from a July 31, 1945 article, in the Vidette-Messenger, Valparaiso, Indiana. Here’s the full PDF and an excerpt below.

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Old News: New Jeep Developed for Sand & Swamps

December 2, 2009 • CATEGORIES: Old News Articles This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
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New_jeep_developed_sand_1944In the May 25, 1944, edition of the Ogden Standard Examinier was a press release out of Toledo, Ohio.  Buried between articles on “GI Haircutting Leaves Much To Be Desired”, “Dog Quarantine To Be Strict”, and a map of Bombing Times (shown below because it’s a cool map), was the following announcement:

New Jeep Developed For Sand, Swamps

TOLEDO, O., May 25 (AP) — A sand and swamp jeep, which can carry eight men over soft beaches at 50 miles an hour, has been developed for coast guard shore patrol duty by Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., Ward M. Canaday, President, announced today.  The new vehicle is much the same as the standard model except that it is 12 inches longer, has a lower gear ratio, is equipped with jumbo-balloon tires, and has a rotary hoisting device which enables it to extricate itself or other vehicles from mud and sand, Canaday said.

Josh notes that the jeep in this article is the MLW.  He pointed us to the Milweb website.  Here’s a picture from that site.  Many more pics are there along with an article by Mark Askew, who has written a good book about rare jeeps called Rare WWW2 Jeeps.

mlw

And, just for fun, this pre-Dday Map:

war_targets_may_24_1944

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