Jeep

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Jeep is the American automobile brand that turned a wartime utility vehicle into a cultural institution recognized on every continent. In the summer of 1940, the U.S. Army gave 135 companies an almost impossible task: build a working four-wheel-drive reconnaissance prototype in just 49 days. Only two companies replied. What came out of that frantic competition was a small, spartan machine that would define an entire category of vehicle, inspire generations of imitators from Japan to the Philippines, and eventually carry a brand name now estimated to be worth between $22 and $33.5 billion.

  How did a light military workhorse become one of the world's most recognized automobile brands? Who actually invented it, and why did that question spark years of legal battles? And what is it about Jeep's design, with its solid axles and open top, that earns it comparison to the Porsche 911 as a model central to its brand's identity? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Race to Build It

  ›

  Harold Crist, Bantam's chief engineer, had no one on staff capable of drafting the vehicle plans when the Army's 49-day deadline arrived. He hired Karl Probst, a freelance designer from Detroit, who agreed to begin work on the 17th of July, 1940, initially without any salary. In just two days, Probst completed a full set of blueprints for the vehicle Bantam called the BRC, or Bantam Reconnaissance Car. Five days after that, Bantam submitted its bid with those blueprints in hand.

  The prototype was hand-built and driven from Butler, Pennsylvania to Camp Holabird, Maryland on the 23rd of September for Army testing. It passed nearly every criterion except engine torque. The Army, however, was not convinced Bantam had the manufacturing scale to deliver the volumes the military needed.

  So the Army shared Bantam's design with Willys-Overland and Ford, encouraging both companies to improve on it. The resulting Ford "Pygmy" and Willys "Quad" prototypes looked strikingly similar to the original Bantam. All three manufacturers used four-wheel drivetrain components supplied by the same firm, Spicer. When the Army revised the weight limit upward from 1,275 to 2,450 pounds, Willys's chief engineer Delmar "Barney" Roos adapted the design to use the company's heavy but powerful "Go Devil" engine, and Willys won the production contract.

  American Bantam, the company that started it all, built approximately 2,700 vehicles to its own BRC-40 design before pivoting to build heavy-duty trailers for the war effort for the remainder of the conflict.

• 3. War Machine

  ›

  Willys-Overland and Ford together produced around 640,000 Jeeps during World War II, accounting for roughly 18 percent of all wheeled military vehicles built in the United States during the war. Nearly 30 percent of that total production went to Great Britain and the Soviet Red Army.

  An average of 145 Jeeps were supplied to every Army infantry regiment. The vehicles were used for an extraordinary range of tasks: laying cable, operating as field ambulances, running sawmills, pumping water as firefighting equipment, pulling loads as tractors, and, fitted with appropriate wheels, rolling on railway tracks. Ford also built an amphibious version called the GPA, nicknamed the "seep" for Sea Jeep, though it proved too limited both as an off-road vehicle and as a watercraft.

  The cost per vehicle under the first contract with Willys was $648.74, while Ford's price was $782.59 per unit. Yet despite years of advertising from both companies claiming credit for the vehicle, no Jeep-branded vehicle actually existed until the 1945 Willys CJ-2A. War correspondent Ernie Pyle, who won the Pulitzer Prize, called the Jeep and the Coleman G.I. Pocket Stove "the two most important pieces of noncombat equipment ever developed." Writer Doug Stewart described the vehicle as "the spartan, cramped, and unstintingly functional jeep," calling it "the ubiquitous World War II four-wheeled personification of Yankee ingenuity and cocky, can-do determination."

  The Museum of Modern Art recognized the Jeep as a masterpiece of functionalist design and has periodically included it in its collection.

• 4. Where the Name Came From

  ›

  Early in 1941, Willys test driver Irving "Red" Hausmann drove a Jeep up the steps of the United States Capitol to demonstrate its off-road capability. He had recently heard soldiers at Fort Holabird referring to the vehicle as a "jeep." When syndicated columnist Katharine Hillyer of the Washington Daily News asked him what the vehicle was called, Hausmann replied, "It's a jeep." Hillyer's article ran nationally on the 19th of February, 1941, and from that moment the name stuck to the 4x4.

  The most popular theory about the origin of the word traces it to the military designation GP, standing for Government Purposes or General Purpose, slurred into a single syllable the same way HMMWV became "Humvee." Joe Frazer, who served as Willys-Overland president from 1939 to 1944, claimed he personally coined the word by doing exactly that.

  R. Lee Ermey, on his television series Mail Call, challenged that explanation by pointing out that Ford's GPW abbreviation stood not for "General Purpose" but for G (government use), P (80-inch wheelbase), and W (Willys-Overland designed engine). Ermey argued that soldiers were unlikely to have been familiar with the GP designation at all, and that they named the vehicle after Eugene the Jeep, a character in E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip who first appeared as early as mid-March 1936. Eugene was Popeye's "jungle pet," described as "small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems."

  The word had existed in military slang long before the war, used as early as World War I to describe new recruits or unproven vehicles. A 1942 dictionary of military slang, Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, held in the library at the Pentagon, defined "jeep" as a four-wheel-drive vehicle of one-half to one-and-a-half-ton capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty, as well as any small plane, helicopter, or gadget.

• 5. Fighting Over the Trademark

  ›

  Willys-Overland filed the original trademark application for the Jeep brand name in February 1943, while the war was still underway. The Federal Trade Commission initially ruled in favor of Bantam in May 1943, and continued to reprimand Willys after the war for its advertising. The FTC issued a formal complaint ordering the company to cease and desist any claims that it "created or designed" the Jeep; Willys was permitted only to advertise its contribution to the vehicle's development.

  Minneapolis-Moline also contested the trademark, though the FTC largely set that claim aside. Willys pressed on, producing the first civilian CJ vehicles in 1945, and being the only company to keep building "Jeep" vehicles after the war. That continuity proved decisive. Willys-Overland was eventually granted the registered trademark for "Jeep" in June 1950. Separately, King Features Syndicate had held a trademark on the Jeep name for their comics since August 1936.

  Willys had also considered marketing the civilian vehicle under the name AGRIJEEP, receiving that trademark in December 1944, but chose instead to call its civilian models the "Universal Jeep" to reflect uses beyond farming.

  Decades later, legal disputes continued over the brand's visual identity. Chrysler Jeep and General Motors waged a court battle over the right to use seven slots in their respective radiator grilles. Chrysler claimed exclusive rights to the seven-slot design, arguing it had been Willys's postwar choice after the war ended and Ford's nine-slot grille was no longer the standard.

• 6. A Brand That Kept Changing Hands

  ›

  After the war, Willys chose not to revive its passenger-car business. Instead, the company launched the Jeep Station Wagon in 1946, the Jeep Truck in 1947, and the Jeepster in 1948. When its 1952 attempt to reenter the passenger-car market with the Willys Aero sedan failed, Kaiser Motors acquired the company in 1953 for $60 million. Kaiser initially called the merged entity Willys Motors, then renamed it Kaiser-Jeep in 1963.

  American Motors Corporation bought Kaiser's money-losing Jeep operations in 1970, this time for $70 million. In 1976, the CJ-7 crossed 100,000 civilian units in annual global sales for the first time. AMC then invited Renault to invest in 1979, and Renault began selling Jeeps through its European dealerships, starting in Belgium and France. Under that partnership, Jeep introduced the XJ Cherokee, its first unibody SUV, and global sales topped 200,000 for the first time in 1985.

  Renault's own financial difficulties, compounded by its heavy investment in AMC while simultaneously laying off workers in France, contributed to a crisis that ended with the assassination of Renault CEO Georges Besse in 1986 by the French extremist group Action Directe. Renault's management sold AMC quickly afterward. Chrysler Corporation acquired it in 1987, primarily to gain the Jeep brand. Through subsequent mergers Jeep passed to DaimlerChrysler in 1998, then to Chrysler Group LLC, and on the 15th of December, 2014 to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The brand is currently owned by Stellantis, the multinational that formed from that lineage.

• 7. Life After the Battlefield

  ›

  In the Philippines, surplus Willys MB and Ford GPW vehicles left behind after World War II and Filipino independence became the foundation for one of the most distinctive transportation cultures in the world. Local builders lengthened and widened the rear section of the vehicles to carry more passengers, creating what became known as the Jeepney. Over decades, Jeepneys evolved from repurposed military hardware into elaborate, highly decorated vehicles that became, as the source notes, "the most ubiquitous symbol of the modern Philippines." Today most Jeepneys are scratch-built by local manufacturers using entirely different powertrains.

  In Iceland, the word Jeppi, derived from Jeep, entered the language during World War II and remains in common use as the generic term for any type of SUV.

  Across the world, various manufacturers built their own versions under license or outright copied the design. In France, Delahaye produced imitations, and after 1954, Hotchkiss manufactured Jeeps under license from Willys. Mitsubishi and Toyota built versions in Japan. Mahindra in India and EBRO in Spain produced licensed variants. In 1965, Jeep developed the M715 army truck, a militarized version of its civilian J-series truck that served extensively in the Vietnam War and is still being produced today by Kia under license.

  The Jeep brand also entered a different kind of cultural territory when it signed a shirt sponsorship deal worth 35 million euros with Italian football club Juventus in April 2012. Since 2018 it has been the title sponsor of France's top men's professional basketball league, LNB Pro A, which markets itself as Jeep Elite.