Jeep-Willys-News Research Archives

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Photos from Don Pratt Sedona Jeep Tours

• CATEGORIES: Features, Old Images • TAGS: , This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

The 1966 Volume 12, No. 5, issue of Jeep News featured these photos from Don Pratt’s Pink Jeep Tours from Sedona, Arizona. The company now offers tours in four Arizona locations.

According to this site, Pink Jeep Tours is the oldest continuously operating Jeep Tour Company in the United States. It was started in 1958 by a Sedona Realtor named Don Pratt, who would drive clients to see homes at Broken Arrow Estates. The Broken Arrow tour is the original Jeep tour and is still today the most popular tour in Sedona.Why did he make the jeeps pink? Mr. Pratt got the idea while visiting the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach, where everything was pink.

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Tuesday’s Updates

• CATEGORIES: Features, Old Images, Old News Articles • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

Tuesday’s updates will be arriving late morning (though check out the jeep in the post that follows this one), as will answers to many emails in my inbox. In the meantime, for you early risers who have suffered eWillys withdrawals, here’s an article on FCs to string you along.

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Second Annual Jeep Derby in T or C, NM

• CATEGORIES: Features, Old Images, Old News Articles, Racing • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

The May 1957 issue of Willys News covered the 2nd Annual Jeep Derby in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Among the racers were Bud Jackson from the Hemet Jeep Club and Wally Klingele and Barney Nelson from the Yakima Ridge Runners. Klingele and Nelson drove their jeeps to the event! Only 14 of the 20 entrants completed the eighty mile race.

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Early Warn Manufacturing Co. History

• CATEGORIES: Features, Old Images, Old News Articles • TAGS: This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

This May 1957 Willys News article provides some interesting history about the Warn Manufacturing Company. Apparently there was some early resistance to using the first generation of the warn hubs, because jeep owners felt they’d purchased their jeeps for the four wheel drive capability. The initial hubs turned the jeeps into two wheel drive, which some owners felt defeated the whole point of owning a jeep. However, through education and marketing, the Warn folks slowly turned naysayers into advocates.

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From a 1995 Field & Stream Magazine article:

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These were the first locking/unlocking hubs Warn developed. These were advertised as early as October of 1953 in the Popular Mechanics:

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