UPDATE: A twist on the 4-in-1 campaign shared below was the use of the term “4-Purpose Jeep” in some newspaper ads.

A few months after the introduction of the CJ-2A in July of 1945 Willys-Overland introduced the 4-in-1-functional vehicle advertising concept for the Willys Universal ‘Jeep’, which was an effort to quickly explain how Swiss-army-knife-like the new jeep could be. Perhaps, speculatively speaking, it was even a play off of the “4” in the 4-wheel-drive aspects of the jeep as well? Either way, for a short-time, in late-1945 and early 1946 Willys-Overland pushed the idea of the jeep as having 4 different functions for farm and industry.

I would argue that the campaign wasn’t very successful, or at least didn’t work for me, because just this morning I had to once again look up what constituted the “4”. In case you can’t remember, let’s take a quick look at how this campaign might have originated.

WHAT THE JEEP CAN DO: The earliest mention I have of the four functions was in the Saturday Evening Post’s November 10, 1945, two-page-ad, the first big splash of advertising for the new Universal Jeep, where W-O claims in bold at the top of the ad that the ‘Jeep’ is a vehicle capable of doing a “thousand jobs”:

Looking more closely ad the ad text, W-O never gets around to listing all 1,000 possible jobs for their new vehicle, but, after claiming the Universal “Jeep” can do almost Anything, the company breaks down the CJ-2A’s functionality into four categories: 1) As a Truck, 2) As a Runabout, 3) As a Mobile Power Unit, and 4) As a Tractor. But, absent from this page is the 4-in-1 branding.

The Four-Function Jeep: The very next month, Willys-Overland inches closer to the 4-in-1 concept by proclaiming in a second two-page ad on December 02, 1945, in the Saturday Evening Post, that the ‘Jeep’ was a “The Four-Function” vehicle.

Once again, Willys-Overland listed four categories, but this time a) changed the order,  2) softened the “truck” claim, changing it to a Light Truck, and c) softened the “tractor” claim, changing it to Light Tractor as the following category headers show: 1) Use it as a Runabout, 2) Use it as a Light Tractor, 3) Use it as a Mobile Power Unit, and 4) Use it as a Light Truck.

Still, as of December 1945, the term 4-in-1 still wasn’t used in the company’s major advertising campaigns.

The 4-IN-1 Jeep: That changed on January 19, 1945, when W-O published a third two-page-ad with the title “For Business Or Farm, The 4-IN-1 ‘Jeep’ Does More Jobs … Tougher Jobs“.

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