45 By 1958, sales of Willys military Jeeps to the US Army had dwindled to almost nothing. In response, company engineers began to design new vehicles, such as the Mechanical Mule. But an easier and more profitable idea was to focus more attention on selling Jeeps to foreign governments.
One large customer was the Turkish Army, which placed an order for 1,600 Jeeps with the provision that they had to be assembled in Turkey. No problem, said Willys. The company was an old hand at setting up overseas assembly. By 1961, the assembly plant in Turkey was in operation and produced the 1,600 vehicles, which (by looking at old photos) appear to have been the rare Model 606, a militarized version of the CJ-3B high-hood model. The Turkish army was so pleased with its Jeeps that it decided to order an additional 4,000 units.
By the way, Willys-Overland earned double profit on this order: one by selling the parts to build the Jeeps and another by charging a royalty per vehicle built. That’s why Willys usually made more money in overseas markets than it did in the United States.
46 An old joke that soldiers used to tell was that after they died they wanted to be buried in their Jeep. Why? “Because there’s never been a hole made that my Jeep can’t get me out of,” they said.
Body and Interior
47 Willys-Overland wanted to make certain that everyone knew who built the Jeep MA, so up front, just over the grille, the Willys name is stamped in large letters. The company put its name on the rear of the body of the MB until around March 1942, when it was told by the army to stop the practice. Ford Motor Company also wanted to take credit for its efforts building Jeeps, so it stamped the Ford name on the rear panel of the MB body until April 1942, when it too was told to stop the practice. The army made both companies switch to a plain rear panel.
The president of Willys-Overland was Joseph W. Frazer. His employees nicknamed him “Jeeps” Frazer because he managed to win the big contract for army Jeeps, thus ensuring Willys’ survival. The vehicle is a Willys MA.
48 The body design of the production-model World War II–era army Jeep, the MB, is sort of a composite of the Willys MA body shell and the Ford GP hood. The military preferred the Ford’s flat hood over the Willys’ rounded one because the flat surface was useful for spreading out maps, using as a dinner table, serving as a chaplain’s altar, etc.
49 The ubiquitous stamped grille was actually designed by Ford. It soon became standardized on Willys and Ford Jeeps because it was found to be quicker and cheaper to produce than the slat grilles seen on the earlier Willys products. That said, however, some 25,808 early Willys MBs were produced with the slat-style grille. I wonder how many have survived.
50 Here’s something weird: The famous Jeep seven-slot grille, known throughout the world, wasn’t used on World War II Jeeps because it hadn’t been created yet. The MB grille is a nineslot design. The seven-slot grille showed up first in mid-1945 with production of the civilian Jeep CJ-2A. It was also used on early “pilot” model civilian Jeeps as well as prototypes.
51 Even the Bantam Motors production models switched to the Ford-style flat hood. However, Bantam retained its unique slat grille and unique headlamp layout, probably because it never was given the chance to produce the standardized Jeep MB. In all, Bantam produced only 2,605 of its BRC-40 model.
52 To illustrate the difference in size and resources of Willys-Overland versus Ford, Willys purchased its Jeep bodies from American Central Manufacturing of Connersville, Indiana, which produced them to the Willys design. This was because Willys-Overland lacked the financial reserves to buy body tooling. On the other hand, deep-pockets Ford Motor Company could easily afford to produce its Jeep bodies in-house at the Lincoln plant. Although at first glance the two appear identical, there are a number of minor differences between them.
A story persists that Jeep bodies were also produced in York, Pennsylvania, but to date I haven’t seen enough hard evidence to convince me of that. One thing is true, however: With Jeep vehicles, anything is possible.
53 One nice touch seen on army Jeeps is that the headlamps swivel up and backward to provide a convenient under-the-hood lamp for adequate lighting for any needed field repairs in the engine bay. All you need to do is remove one wingnut and twist the lamp around. Question: Why don’t we have this feature on modern Jeeps?
54 Any GI will tell you that the standard Jeep front seats are very uncomfortable after a while. However, they’re much preferred over the back seat, which is situated right over the rear axle, guaranteeing a rough ride and supposedly even bringing on a case of the piles. Officers usually rode in the front passenger seat and left their underlings to suffer in the back seat. Generals who liked to be in control would even drive, letting their “driver” have the front passenger seat.
55 The military Jeep body was built of low-carbon steel, which was 18 gauge for the exterior body panels and 16 gauge for the floor. The body was bolted to the frame via 16 bolts. Initially, the builders inserted rubber dampers between the body and the frame at the bolt holes to help insulate noise. After a while, wartime restrictions on rubber were instituted because India was under Japanese occupation, and that was where most rubber came from. The situation forced Willys to change to fabric shims. As a side note, the wartime shortage of rubber was also the impetus to the invention of synthetic rubber.
56 The World War II–era army Jeep didn’t come with the tailgate that’s so familiar to Jeepers. Although a tailgate would have been a useful feature, adding one would have raised the vehicle’s cost and forced the company to add extra bracing to the body, which in turn would have increased the weight. The fold-down tailgate didn’t appear in production until mid-1945, when the first civilian Jeeps began to trickle down the assembly lines.
57 Although both the Bantam and Willys Quad prototypes had onepiece windshields, the army decided to standardize the two-piece windshield seen on the Ford GP vehicles. Willys basically copied the design for its MA vehicles. All the prototypes had fold-down windshields, but in my opinion Ford appears to have been the inspiration for the standardized design.
58 As World War II progressed, Willys-Overland began developing and experimenting with a two-passenger baby Jeep featuring a body that would be lightweight and cheap to build because it was made out of plywood! The tiny Jeep included several other ideas to save weight and cost, such as leaving off the headlamps and most of the gauges. Several prototypes were constructed, but after testing, the army ultimately rejected it.
This 1943 photo shows two experimental Jeep MB-Ls flanking a stock MB in Toledo. The MB-L (for “Light”) used cut-down bumpers, plywood body panels, and were stripped of extraneous equipment to reduce weight. They held just two passengers.
59 Determined to win as much wartime business as it could, in 1942 Willys management delivered to the army an experimental six-wheel Jeep, configured as a 6x6 cargo truck and built on a lengthened and beefed-up Willys MB chassis. Capable of hauling 1 ton of cargo or troops, it’s not certain what became of the prototype.
In an effort to gain business, Willys engineered this 6x6 Jeep truck. However, the army already had many other truck suppliers and decided not to use it.
60 During the war, an amphibious Jeep was also produced: the GP-A (for amphibious). Popularly known as the Seep (for sea-going Jeep), it was designed and built by a joint venture of four-wheel-drive truck specialist Marmon-Herrington and boatbuilder
