Ron Beckett:
Recently an Australian 4WD mag had a history of Jeep article [written with an eye to finding some 4x4 pedigree for Chrysler Wrangler -ed] that was patently wrong...
Jim Allen:
Bless your heart for upholding the truth! Chrysler has been re-writing
history and I once got a curt phone call from them over one of my Jeep
history articles.
Ahem! Bantam was #1 with the Jeep. Having driven all the 2nd run prototype jeeps (Bantam BRC-40, Ford GP, Willys MA) I like the Bantam the best. The Ford was the best thought out and assembled (but it had a crap engine). The Willys really only had the engine, the rest of it was pretty substandard and poorly thought out. Willys got to benefit from the other two companies developments. The Willys MB slat grilles were very much a copy of the Ford layout. By the way, the standard drivetrain used for the Bantam, Ford and Willys (the T-84 trans, Spicer 18 t-case and Spicer 25 axles) were all first assembled and ordered by Bantam. Still, these Jeeps were far from the first 4x4s!!
The earliest American 4x4 I have found is dated 1902, the Cotta. It
predated the 1904 Dutch Spyker (some sources say 1902), generally
acknowledged as the #1. Oddly enough, the Aussies were very early into the 4x4 game with the Calwell-Vale in 1910-14.
The first commercial Yank 4x4 truck was the Duplex Model B of 1907 (some
sources say 1906). There was a one-off 4x4 touring car of 1905 (the Van
Winkle) but the Badger Four Wheel Drive Auto Company (later FWD - still in business) came out with a prototype four-wheel car in 1908, perfected it in 1909 and called it the "Battleship". It had the first practical steerable front axle, in the form we are accustomed to seeing. FWD went on the built the Model B 3-ton (1912-1930), used extensively by the US Army and the Brits in WWI. FWD had the honour of selling the Army it's first 4x4 (a touring car converted to a 1.5 ton truck) in 1911.
To 1908,and the advent of Otto Zachow's Badge Four Wheel Drive Auto, 4x4s had either been chain drive (talk about a weird setup!) or spur and ring gear drive (I call it the Van Winkle drive after the apparent inventor), which was another oddball setup. It found favor with some in the form of the 1914-1928 Jefferey (to 1916)/Nash (1916-28) Quad and with Walter, who uses it to this day.
There was even a 4x4 kit for Model T Fords beginning in 1914 by the J.L.
Livingood Company. These kits are still being made from the original
tooling!!
Lots of history!
A [further] Jeep history lesson...
Jim Allen:
Since the origins of the Land-Rover are so tied in with the Jeep....... I had to chirp in.
Simon said:
"....forget that the original Series I prototypes were built on chassis' taken from ex-WWII Willis GP (General Purpose, later to be slurred into "Jeep") vehicles..."
Jim Alllen:
As a 4x4 historian, I feel the need to preach a bit so as to stop a
40 year old (at least) bit of incorrect history. Forgive me, all of you,
but this has invaded my brain and I cannot rest until it's set straight (he said tongue in cheek).
1) (an aside - not the main point) Only the first center-steer LR
prototype used a Jeep chassis. Several other war weary Willys were tested, including one of Maurice Wilks' estate.
2) There was NEVER a military designation "GP" or "General Purpose"
applied to the quarter ton or any other military vehicle. The WWII
nomenclature for the Jeep was, "truck, 1/4-ton, 4x4, command
reconnaissance." Thus the term GP could not have been slurred (more below).
3) The only "GP" connection was the second Ford prototype (based
largly on the original "Pygmy" that competed with the Bantam and Willys
"Quad" pilot vehicles), of which some 4500 were built in 1941 before a
design was standardized in the form of the Willys MB, (you correctly
pronounced Willis, though it is still spelled Willys). The Ford variant was called the GP, with GP being a Ford engineering term - "G" denoting a government contract vehicle, and "P" for "80-inch wheelbase reconnaissance car". The later Ford GPW, built essentially to the Willys MB design, added a "W" to the term for "Willys."
4) The term Jeep was not unique to the quarter-ton. As far back as
1936, it had been used as a nickname for vehicles, from a 1936 4x4 oil
exploration vehicle built for the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company by the FWD company, to the YB-17 prototype bomber, the Kellett YB-1B autogyro of 1937, the Minneapolis Moline UTX prime mover of 1940, and the Dodge VC and WC series half-ton 4x4s of 1940 and 1941. The term itself goes back to WWI and was an Army term for , a) A new human recruit, and b) A new motor vehicle recieved in the motorpool for tests. It was also a midwestern regional slur akin to "Jerk."
5) The nickname Jeep came about as much from a comic strip character
as anything else. Eugene-the-Jeep debuted in the "Popeye the Sailor" comic strip in 1936 and became an instant sensation. Eugene could do anything, up to and including interdimensional travel. Soon "Jeep" became a slang term for something extraordinary.
It isn't hard to grasp how a bunch of grizzled Army motorpool
troops would call the quarter-ton a Jeep, given the old Army term then
still in use , and the newer Eugene reference. The name wasn't cemented
until much later. The most common term for the quarter-ton was Peep (with Blitz Buggy, Leapin' Lena, Bug and others in common use also) but in 1941, the first Willys prototypes were being demonstrated to Congress on the capitol steps. One of the bystanders asked Willys test driver Red Hausmann, "What the heck is this thing?" He replied, tounge in cheek as much as anything, "It's a Jeep!" Katheryn Hillyer, a syndicated columnist was there to hear the exchange and included it in her column that ran nationwide.
After that, the general public began to know the quarter-ton as the Jeep, even though in the Army, the Dodges were still "Jeeps" and the quarter-tons were "Peeps". Soon millions of civvies were drafted and they overwhelmed the term used by men already in uniform. I have found lots of reference to "Peeps" all the way to the end of war in dispatches, photo captions tags, letters home, etc.
6) Some of this contradicts "established" sources but the myth has been
propagated over and over again by researchers and authors who won't take
the time to look at primary sources. I did, and corrected some of my early writing on the topic. All the evidence is there, and fairly easily found!
Thanks everyone for your indulgance!
Jim Allen : Email here.