Salute the Jeep

It is 120 years since Karl Benz revealed his three-wheeled, internal combustion-engined motor car to the world - twelve decades in which the world has 'shrunk' under the wheels of self-propelled vehicles.

Of course, Karl Benz was not the first person to manufacture a horseless carriage. In 1789 the Frenchman, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, built a steam-driven carriage that could zap along at 3 mph! In the early part of the nineteenth century, quite a number of steam-driven contraptions were built in England - resulting in the introduction of the Red Flag Act of 1836. Under this piece of legislation all self-propelled vehicles were limited to 4 mph, and a man had to walk in front of the vehicle, carrying either a red flag during the day or a red lantern at night. Thankfully, for the sake of motor vehicle development, the Red Flag Act was repealed sixty years later.

At the time of any 'anniversary', motoring writers often go into print with their own lists of the 'most-significant' cars. Predictably, the lists include the original Benz and many models that are (today) highly-prized collector's items; Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Bugatti Royale, Duesenberg, Packard, etc. Most also include several vehicles from the performance factories of Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati, BMW, Alfa Romeo, MG and so on. Few journalists ever mention what I regard as THE most significant motor vehicle since the original Benz.

In my opinion that vehicle is the one known around the world as the 'wartime Jeep'. No other vehicle (no matter how beautiful, desirable, fashionable, fast or well-constructed) comes close to the little 1/4-tonner that has played such a major role in our history.

The wartime Jeep was the first motor vehicle that could perform most of the duties previously relegated to the horse. Of course, cars were a very well established part of life prior to WW2. However, the vast majority of 'cars' were designed to be used on formed roads of some description. There were four-wheel drives, but they were generally fairly crude trucks with limited maneuverability. None were designed to cope with almost any type of terrain, including river crossings, sand dunes, swamps, jungle undergrowth and snow fields.

General Douglass Macarthur foresaw the advent of something mechanical to replace the horse when he said, in 1932, "The value of the cavalry ended with the Spanish American War."

In 1940, the United States Government announced a 'competition' to see if any American auto company could produce a ¼ ton 4x4 general-purpose truck to some very tight guidelines - one of which was that the complete vehicle should not weigh more than 1,308 lbs (593 kg).

This figure was later changed to 2,160 lbs, as it was not possible for any manufacturer to meeting the lighter specification.

Three manufacturers answered the call -Bantam, Ford and Willys-Overland - and each submitted three vehicles for initial testing at Fort Myer in Virginia. The three models were so successful that the army awarded contracts to each company for the construction of 1500 vehicles for final testing in the USA, Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands.

The 2,030-lb Bantam was the only vehicle to meet the amended specification, so Ford and Willys-Overland burnt the midnight oil to cut down on weight. Willys even reduced the amount of paint to one coat. As chief engineer Delmar Roos explained at the time: "The application of another coat would have put us over the limit."

Willys eventually won the right to produce a vehicle, based on the 1,500 examples of their MA model which were shipped off on lend-lease to the Soviet Union. Most of the 3,000 Ford GP's and Bantams were sent to Great Britain on a similar deal - and Ford built another 2,150 GPs for US requirements.

Willys-Overland had won 'the contest' and set to work building another 16,000 vehicles (code named MB) to a revised design standard.

Ford also built the Willys vehicles under a license agreement, and their vehicle was then known as the Ford GP-W (for General Purpose Willys).

By the last years of the war, the Willys-Overland plant in Toledo, Ohio, was punching out three finished MB's every four minutes, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. That's 7,560 vehicles a week!

The last wartime jeep was built on August 20, 1945. Willys had built 359,849, Ford 227, 314.

The most significant motor vehicle of all time was:

- described by American presidents as "the most important contribution in WWII" and "the most valuable weapon in WWII"

- used to transport presidents, prime ministers, kings, politicians, generals, soldiers, civilians, the wounded, and the dead

- carried in aircraft, dropped from aircraft and towed aircraft

- adapted to carry more than a quarter of a ton, to drive completely submerged, to run on railway tracks and across deep snow

- used as an altar by chaplains, a podium by generals and as a regular inclusion by the cartoonists of the day

- played its part in every land-based theater of conflict and proved to be extremely reliable. Major General Eugene Reybold (the US Army chief of engineers) said: "I have seen the jeep everywhere, and though it is doubtless mere coincidence, for there must be many disabled and wrecked jeeps, I myself, in all my travels have never seen a jeep that would not run when it was needed."

- this inspiration for the manufacture of the Jeep CJ2 (Civilian Jeep) to satisfy a demand for a practical multi-purpose vehicle to help rebuild a shattered world

- the vehicle that inspired Rover to produce the Land Rover, Toyota the LandCruiser, Nissan the Patrol and on and on...

- the vehicle that spawned many variations from the CJ5 in 1954 to the introduction of the four-door Wagoneer in 1963 and subsequently (consequently) the 4WD recreational vehicle boom - a phenomenal growth industry directly attributable to the early versions of the Jeep.

Therefore, when you think of the history of the motor car, it is OK to recall the early motorized carts, the toffy-nosed tourers of the first decades of this century, the racy Renaults, Italas, Napiers, Mercers and Bentleys, the Chryslers, Cadillacs, Dodges and Oldsmobiles of the prohibition era, the Hispano-Suizas, Cords, Auburns and Packards of the movie stars, the Mercedes Benz, Jaguars and Daimlers of the well-to-do of yesterday and today, the muscle cars of the sixties and seventies, and the thousands upon thousands of different models that have passed on to their own little corner of the junkyard.

It's OK to recall all of those vehicles. It's even OK to set some aside as prime examples of the automobile manufacturers' craft. However, none can ever rate as more significant, since the first Benz, than the Willys MB and the Ford GP-W.