I 2012 I purchased this July 1951 brochure, an 11-page “Your Opportunity to Profit with Willys” (from number FB 1 4CM-751 GG). At that point, I hadn’t bought many brochures before winning it on eBay. Unlike 99% of Willys-Overland brochures, this one was unique, because it targeted potential Willys Dealership owners.
The reason I bought it, and the reason I never published it (only now remembering that I hadn’t), was that it was the foundational piece for my idea for a jeep museum. It was the backbone, the narrative that I wanted to course through the entire experience. It was the type of business case study (example study), that I had read many times while getting my MBA, but rather it being on paper, it was an experience.
The overriding question centered on the brochure. If it was 1951 and you had the means and opportunity to invest in a Willys-Overland franchise, should you?
A ROUGH MUSEUM OUTLINE:
Folks would begin the museum in a room with a 1950s feel. A presentation would begin with the look and feel of a 1950s commercial, except this would be trying to sell folks on the WO franchise. The video would end encouraging folks to take.a walk through history to better get to know Willys-Overland’s roots, starting with a Pre-WWII display, with 1920s and 1930s music, showing and explaining the history. It would be intimate, quiet, peaceful.
The next room would be the drums of war, the approach of WWII, the early development of Recon car options, ending with the Bantam/Ford/Willys options, with Willys winning the bid, just in time for the US to enter WWII.
Folks. would enter to the sounds of war. Maps would show jeeps being lease-lent all over the world, Britain, Africa, Indonesia, Australia, etc. The room underscores the the wide uses for the jeep (and GPA and other oddities).
As the war was being waged, visitors would encounter a more pastoral room, a relief from the war, showing WO experiments with jeeps and farming. It would also demonstrate Willys attempts to advertise the jeep, linking the willys and jeep brand, whenever they could, until the FTC case and the Ford lawsuit caused WO to shift their branding ideas.
The next room would be the introduction of the CJ-2A, the ads, the multiple implements, the implement companies. The next room would show the competitive landscape, with Willys adding other vehicles, and how the big three were responding (and how consumers were responding). Also highlighted would be WO’s continuing shift in brand marketing, the shift away from Jeep as the overriding brand to Willys as the over riding brand.
Subsequently, visitors would be taken into a unique room, showcasing the newly introduced Hurricane engine, but this would be a bigger-than-life walkthrough engine in plexiglass, so folks could look below at a crankshaft turning, a camshaft above, pistons to one side, etc. It would be a truly unique experience.
At this point in the museum, visitors would face reach the time period of the brochure. It’s the point in all business cases: What’s the decision, to invest or not to invest.
At this point visitors transition to the troubles at W-O and the decision to sell out to Henry Kaiser. The finally room showcase the Kaiser years, as the company took control of Willys assets and focused back on the unique 4WD capabilities of the jeep lineup, while also embracing “JEEP” as the brand.
The museum ends at 1963, when Kaiser shifts to more modern vehicles, such as the Wagoneer and Gladiator, and how those vehicles pushed sales to new heights, as well as a push away from jeeps as pure utility vehicles and more as a fun, family, or sporty vehicle.
Anyway, that was the plan, but time and resources never quite materialized.
Ann and I visited a lot of museums on the way to developing ideas in hopes of creating an experience that would bring in folks from outside of the jeep world, because based on my early research into auto museums, if it doesn’t cater to non-jeep folks, it likely won’t generate the income necessary to sustain itself.
