David Tracy wrote a good piece of the engineering flaw(?) related to the WWII jeeps, specifically the installation of the bell crank on the axle and the problems it caused. He also does a good pointing out that there were alternatives to Willys’ steering system that were used by Bantam and Ford on their prototypes. I’m sure he would have liked an answer as to WHY Willys ended up using the system it did, but he doesn’t draw any conclusions.

You can read his article here: http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/the-legendary-world-war-ii-jeep-had-a-dangerous-enginee-1797186236

Bellcrank photo is from the G503 thread: https://g503.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=96&t=224584&start=90