"Rebuilding the Willis" and its History - A Memorable Experience

I have always been interested in vintage and classic cars and Jeeps, especially off roaders and ex-Miltry vehicles with 4-wheel drive option.

I have learned a lot about jeeps over the past few weeks and have completely disassembled the Willys Jeep and had rebuilt it. Certain parts were hard to come by and I had to buy a few parts from the scrap yards. More important, I have learned many things about the Willys Jeep and vehicles in its class.

As anyone who knows about old Jeeps will testify, these rugged little off-roaders can require plenty of restoration, especially to the body tub, after decades of neglect and/or abuse. Many tend to restore the Jeep to it's original condition with original spares. I know that driving the Jeep with its original parts and conditions are tough, especially on undiscplined indian road traffic. Hence, I decided to re-work and renovate the Jeep with modern technology. The result is an upto the mark off-roader with a Hydrolic break system and superb performance. The moanster (as i lovingly address it), gets a bit overheated and I have to cool the engine several times during a long-drive. I have replaced the small radiator fan with a heavy duty one and have mixed the coolant to absorb the extra heat. I am now thinking of doing an engine over-haul and fitting a brand-new radiator. May be, I should go for a five speed gear system too to replace the current three speed one.

I should be thanking Balan Automobiles in Ponkunnam, Kerala, Kurian Kurian - Road Track, Kottayam for their support in re-building the monster and Elektra in Perungudi, Chennai for identifying further problems and preparing the monster for heavy duty off-roading.

I have seen many-a-heads turn as the Monster cut through heavy traffic and once the Monster reached Chennai, I have started getting enquiries for sales. Some one has quoted upto 2.25 lacs, but I've put a lot of effort in getting it to the current state and I don't intend to sell it.

Eversince I started re-working on the Jeep I have been literally studying about it and I used to lay my hands on anything about the Willys Jeep that came my way. During this excercise, I have read many articles on how Willys emerged. Let me share my knowledge on the Willys Jeep through this blog.

If the folks at Willys had known that driving in the dirt was a sport, they would have called them Sport Utility Vehicles, but they didn't, so they were dubbed simply Utility Vehicles. It is up to those of us who came latter to make a sport of driving them. The Willys Utility Wagon is clearly the grand daddy of all modern SUV's. It was a 4WD wagon with enough space inside to load up and go most anywhere.

The original pronunciation of "Willys" was with a short "i" sound for the 'y"; so it was pronounced "Will-iss". But it seems to have been transmuted by the same flexibility of language that could produce "Jeep" out of "GP" (Please scroll down for further details on the same). I've heard that the workers in the Willys factories were the first people to mispronounce the name. Like most everyone I have talked with, they pronounced it with a long "e" sound for the "y"."Willys" should be pronounced "Will- eez" and obviously be more than one "Willy". Everyone seems to get more and more confused over time on the pronounciation of "Willys".

John North Willys bought the Overland Automotive Division of Standard Wheel Company in 1908 and in 1912 named it the Willys-Overland Motor Company. Willys-Overland made both automobiles and trucks. The company was reorganized in 1936 after a depression bankruptcy to Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. Before 1940 nothing like the Willys Jeep as we know it even existed.

As the war in Europe spread in the late '30s, the U.S. Military wanted a new light-weight, four-wheel-drive, reconnaissance vehicle. They solicited bids for command/reconnaissance car with an 80" wheelbase and weighing 1300 lbs in June of 1940. Three major companies responded and competed heavily for those Government contracts by building and demonstrating their own prototypes. Bantam, Ford and Willys-Overland eventually came up with similar looking vehicles. The Bantam company won in the early rounds with it's first prototype, but Willys had the wonderful "Go Devil" flat-head four cylinder engine.

Ford had some good ideas too and there was a pooling of ideas that surely violated the spirit, if not the letter, of intellectual property, trade-mark, and other laws, but served the governments needs. The final winner after a few resubmittals was the GPW. "G" for government, "P" for pigmy (a Ford term) and "W" for Willys.

One story has it that the lowly, uninformed GI's thought "GP" was for general purpose, and pronounced it "jeep". Other people say that the word "jeep" was slang for any wonderfully multipurpose thing. The Popeye cartoon had a character, named "Eugene the Jeep" in 1936, who had all kinds of amazing powers. Anyway, the source of the name "Jeep" is now vailed by the passage of time... but on with the story.

The government selected a vehicle based mostly on the design by the Bantam Car Company. Bantam didn't have the mass production facilities needed to supply the government, and the military wanted multiple suppliers. Willys got a contract to build "jeeps" in late 1940. Ford was also awarded a contract a week later. Many parts were interchangeable between the Willys and Ford jeeps. Of the roughly half million jeeps produced for WW2, Willys-Overland made about 360,000 between 1941 and 1945. The jeeps proved to be rugged and dependable in the war, and by the time the soldiers came home, jeeps were well known and loved for their durability and unstoppability.

Willys-Overland was not one of the automotive giants in the prewar era, and had retooled most of their production facilities to jeeps. After the war, production of passenger cars continued, but the company couldn't ignore the potential civilian market for jeeps. They filed for a trademark registration of "Jeep" and began production. The most direct product transition was the CJ (Command / Civilian Jeep) line. This product was little changed from those that had "won the war". The first CJ-2A was produced in 1945. The line has continued from the CJ2 through the CJ3, CJ5, CJ6, CJ7,and CJ8. (They did make a CJ4 but it was only a prototype that never went into production.) The CJ5 and CJ7 are the most common, with the CJ7 being a little longer than the CJ5. The CJ6 and CJ8 were longer wheel base than the CJ7, but they weren't as popular, and consequently there were fewer of them manufactured.

Back in those post-war years, Willys-Overland tried to broaden their market by returning to the car and truck business, in addition to the CJ's. Their products were nothing like the smooth, graceful pre-war products. Instead they capitalized on the tough, utilitarian image of the Jeep with three new vehicles: the Willys Jeep Wagon in 1946, the Willys Jeep Truck in 1947, and the Willys Jeepster in 1948.

These were called the 'Jeep' Utility Vehicles and all retained clear influences of the military Jeep, but the forms were intermediate between the normal rounded forms of the autos of the period and the boxy Jeep. The wagon was similar to the panel trucks or delivery wagons of the day, but with those unmistakable flat fenders (and later 4WD). The truck was similar in size and functionality of a GMC, Ford or Dodge truck of the day, but once again with the Jeep look and available in 4WD.

The Jeepster was a convertible about half-way between a military Jeep and a sports car. This two wheel drive vehicle was only made from 1948 to 1950, but was resurrected by AMC in the '60's as the Jeepster Commando. Some people point out that the Jeepster was technically a phaetom, not a convertible. A phaeton was a type of two-door touring car without a solid top. To the common man, phaeton doesn't mean much.

The wagon and pickup truck were available in both 2WD and 4WD with a 4-cylinder or 6-cylinder engine. Kaiser bought Willys-Overland in 1953 and dropped "Overland" from the name. In the 1956, Willys introduced snub-nosed forward control models. Production of Willys wagons and trucks continued under the name of the Willys Motor Company until 1963, when the name was changed to the Kaiser-Jeep Corporation. Production of the Willys wagons and trucks continued for two more years until 1965. Willys had production facilities in Brazil, Argentina, Israel, and India, and Japan . Some of these continued making vehicles that were essentially the same as the Utility vehicles for several more years. But eventually Kaiser sold these. Thus ended the production of those interesting vehicles we call Willys. In India, as per my knowledge, the then Mohammend & Mahindra company, which is now Mahindra bought the Willys production facility and started manufacturing Indian Jeeps.

Kaiser bought Willys (1953), AMC bought Kaiser (1970), and Chrysler bought AMC (1987). Then Chrysler merged with Daimler in 1998. The Germans who lost the war to the Jeep now own it!!!