UPDATE: Paul Bruno (aka the History Czar) provided a nice response to this post about his movie effort.  Please check it out.

Some of you might remember the video I posted back in 2009 of the recreated, original BRC (if you haven’t, check it out here).  It seems that the Bantam and its owner, Duncan Rolls, have been touring a bit, landing in an interview with the History Czar in August of 2010 (both the History Czar, seated, and Duncan are pictured below from Nov 2010).

In December of 2010, the Czar blogs about “his and his wife’s 11 year odyssey, along with Max Freedman these past 5 years, to have a feature film made about the creation of the first Jeep, the Bantam Reconnaissance Car (BRC),  in Butler, PA USA during the summer of 1940.”  So, the Czar seems to have a real passion for the Jeep story.

You can go here to check out their facebook page and follow their journey to make a movie:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/?act=39829251#!/pages/The-Jeep-An-American-Triumph/110738008090

Read more about the premise and synopsis here.

I read through the premise and synopsis.  Personally, I’d take a little different tack with the story.  I would place the true story of the original jeep as the background for telling another, fictional story about some type of relationship (love story like the Titanic, father/son, coming of age, etc).

I’ve thought a lot about this because I too have wondered about developing a jeep themed movie, though it would be about the heyday of jeeping/trail riding/clubs/racing of the 70s.

A good example of how such a story, like the Bantam story, doesn’t work as a stand-alone story line can be seen in the Tucker movie.  While I enjoyed the movie, because it was a story about the struggle to make a cool car, most people weren’t all that compelled to go see it, because of the same reason — it was only about the struggle to make this cool car.

That’s just my 2 cents, which might not even be worth that much.

Paul writes, “Many years ago I went thru the front and rear axles on my Willys, changed the ring and pinion gears from 5.38s to 4.27s, replaced all bearings, seals and races with new before repainting the housings and attaching new springs.  For some reason the steering knuckle seals came loose from the metal attach covers so today I went to the local military surplus yard (E. A. Patson Parts and Equipment 907 333-5682) in search of new replacement parts.  I was able to purchase new old stock knuckle seals, differential cover gaskets and the speedometer drive gear for what I felt was a very reasonable cost.

Both the buildings, land and the surplus parts are all for sale so this fantastic source of old Jeep parts is going to go away soon.  I just thought I’d mention that all these old military vehicle parts are for sale, they have lots of parts for some types and some parts for lots of other types.

So, if anyone out there reading EWILLYS is looking for a hard to find part they might want to give Rod a call.  He’s pretty sharp on the old stuff and he understands the idea of repair instead of replace.

I’ve attached a photo of the knuckle seal packaging (unopened) with the packing date from Willys Overland Motors.  I think it’s pretty neat.”