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Welcome to eWillys.com, a website for vintage jeep enthusiasts. I update this website nearly every day with jeep deals, jeep history, interesting reader projects, jeep related info, and more.
These quick searches can help you find things on eBay. People list in the wrong categories all the time, so don't be surprised to see brochures in the parts area for example.
The links to posts below show jeeps grouped by models, condition, and other ways. Some of these jeeps are for sale and others have been sold. If you are unsure whether a vehicle is still for sale or not, email me at d [at] ewillys.com for more info.
There are plenty of interesting, unusual, historic and surprising stories related to Jeeps and their owners. In addition, some of these features have nothing to do with jeeps. This link will display all featured stories starting from the latest.
Looking for parts and not sure where to go? There are a variety of large and small new and used parts sellers both online and offline.
Importantly, the allure of buying a project jeep can be romantic. The reality of restoring a jeep can be quite different, expensive and overwhelming without the right tools and resources. So, tread carefully when purchasing a "project". If you have any concerns about buying a vintage jeep, or run across a scam, feel free to contact me for help, comments or concerns .
Rudolf has found a variety of interesting jeeps for sale in Bali. Here are pics of an unusual GPW.
You can view the first group of images here and learn more about their history. he MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock, Ar, only exhibits one jeep (shown below), but they do have a variety of WWII Jeep photos in their archive, many of which include captions. Here are 9 of them. The photos are part of the Allison Collection of World War II Photographs, the captions of which come from the ACME wire service.
The caption for the image below is: Yanks Hunt Eggs (CQ) in France
France—Holding a lettered board written in French and meaning “have you any eggs?” two Yanks ride in a Jeep and hope for a positive answer from French girls in the city of Rumegies, France. Driver and sign holder is Pvt. Maury Sanders of Corinth, Miss. The other Yank, Pvt. Albert Frank, Burlington, VA., looks on. Credit: Army radiotelephoto from ACME.
The Caption for the image below is: On one of the most dramatic journeys recorded in the annals of the war, so far, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stillwell, at the head of a band of 114 Americans, Burmese nurses, Chinese, Indians, Britons and Anglo-Indians, covered 140 grueling miles on their retreat from Wuntho, Burma, which began on May 4th, 1942. For days the band struggled through the torturous heat of the dense malaria-infested swamps and jungles of Burma, to reach the banks of the Uyu River, where they were forced to abandon the few Jeeps and trucks they had, to proceed on home-made rafts, down the river to the Chindwin and Thenge to Imphal on the Indian frontier. They arrived at their destination, Dinjan, India with only a few cases of malaria and heat exhaustion. Considering what they had been through, their journey was remarkably successful. Here, in a series of 25 official U.S. Army photos, just arrived from India, the story of the retreat is graphically presented. New York Bureau
This bridge was repaired by the Chinese on time, and Major General Franklin C. Sibert, starts ahead of the first Jeep in the column.
Credit: (U.S. Army Photo from ACME)
A writer, and ‘recovering ranch girl’, named Tamara Linse wrote a nice bit of history about the 115th Cavalry Horse Mechanized, which was a National Guard unit from Wyoming that served in WWII.
She notes that early resources were scare. She writes, “The 115th Cavalry was activated nine months before war was officially declared. The entire 115th Cavalry Regiment, all 1,086 men, was inducted into federal service on February 24, 1941, the day they boarded a train for Fort Lewis, Washington.
Like all wartime training facilities, Fort Lewis was unprepared for the influx of soldiers. The men trained with stove pipes for cannons, sticks and brooms for rifles, and jeeps marked “TANK” for enemy armored vehicles. Aircraft used sacks of flour for bombs.”
She also mentions that while some soliders were excited to see the new jeeps, motorcyles, and other mechanized vehicles, other soliders would only give up their horses when you pulled their reins from their (I hesitate to say cold, dead) hands.
In the article, she includes an image, courtesy of the Wyoming State Archives, which shows a horse jumping a jeep. You can check out the entire article here. You might also like to read why/how Men are Like Plants.
While looking up this Crosley (which I’m not quite sure is a Crosley), I discovered the largest Mircocar Museum in the world. The bad news is that it appears closed until Fall 2011 for renovations. However, you can look through the virtual tour to see the types of cars owned by the museum.
According to NWJEEPN.com, an offroader made the mistake of going around a locked gate in order to explore some dirt roads in Clark County, WA. He was caught and punished. As part of his sentencing, he had to publicly apologize via the below YouTube Video. That seems a novel use of YouTube.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmXGe9FBCE8
According to the University of Colorado, in 1943 Glenn Miller was asked to “organize a group of outstanding AAF bands to boost morale. Each would contain musicians especially selected from the draft. Each would be trained to play both inspiring marching music and outstanding dance band music. He envisioned himself as a morale and band builder. While working to achieve his objectives, Miller encountered frustrating opposition from some officers within the military bureaucracy. He did, however, have powerful allies in Washington, who helped him to circumvent red tape.”
Called the “Band of the Training Command of the Army Air Forces under the direction of Capt. Glenn Miller” and stationed at New Haven, Ct, Miller continued to run into some problems. “A famous, if exaggerated, story soon circulated wherein a military official scolded Miller for ruining traditional Army marching music, saying that Sousa marches were as perfectly fine in 1943 as they had been in 1917, to wit Miller reportedly replied, “Tell me, Major, are we still flying the same airplanes that we did in 1917?”
Despite continued flack from those who disagreed with Miller’s plans, Miller continued to make changes. A newsreel eventually captured a practice session. “The newsreel showed off what was called the ‘jeep band’. That is, the marching band’s big drum sets and drummers that were carried aboard jeeps and driven alongside the musicians as they marched on the Green or at the Yale Bowl. The AAF apparently thought Miller was doing the right thing because he simply kept on doing it, much to the delight of the young people in the services who were marching and listening to Miller’s “updated military music”.
This image comes from the University of Colorado Music Department. I searched for other images on the net, but didn’t have any luck.
You might have seen one or another of these images illustrated by Normal Rockwell, but did you know there’s a story as well? Published in the January 29th, 1944, edition of the Saturday Evening Post, the story was written by Wilbur Schram, who went on to be called the “father of communication studies” in the United States. The story appears to be a fun, fictional tale of a jeep named Wilbur and his exploits. Unfortunately, I could not find any copy of the full text anywhere on the net.
Here is the best snapshot I found on Flickr about the article.
Here are closeups also found on Flickr
Claus forwarded this story and pics today from South Africa. As I told him, marriage can be a rocky road, so it only makes sense to start out newlyweds in a jeep! You might remember Claus’ brother’s build, which can be seen here.
Claus writes, “The past weekend my brother was asked, by one of his friends, to provide his jeep as their wedding car. Apparently the jeep was centre of attraction and completely shadowed the newlyweds hehehe :-). It even was part of the decor at the reception hall.”
Craig spotted this cool image of an unusual “Eat More Bread” delivery truck. He believes it was shown at the Chicago Auto Show in 1960. I looked through the Chicago Auto archives, but didn’t have any luck finding other examples of it.
I found another example of this rig in “The Story of the Jeep“
According to the CJ-3B Page, Willys-Overland considered a large delivery truck back in the erly 1940s, but apparently decided not to pursue them at that time.
Sadly, Keith filed a post-tornado special report today. He noted that while he, his wife Patsy and their son survived the storm as it blew through Chattanooga, his truck wasn’t so lucky. To make matters worse, he was just about to install a new starter and get it running, but until he completed that fix he kept it uninsured. So, place your antenna flag at half mast and wish Keith and his family well.
I ran across these images today of a rusted CJ-2A. The photos were taken in 2008 by Dave Scottin Heathcote, Ontario, Canada, and posted on Flickr. Check out the governer throttle along with the 3 datatplates. I think this sitting in a junkyard or in an area with other rusted vehicles. If you scroll over the map on Flickr, you can see exactly where it is. I think there might even be some useful parts on this, too. Given the governor throttle, I wondered if it might have a rear PTO (Click on the 3rd photo and I think you will see the top of a cutoff PTO lever). You can even almost make out the serial number on the data plate (click on image 2).
The MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock, Ar, only exhibits one jeep (shown below), but they do have a variety of WWII Jeep photos in their archive, many of which include captions. Here are 8 of them. The photos are part of the Allison Collection of World War II Photographs, the captions of which come from the ACME wire service.
According to the Museum’s website, “James Allison, a sports writer working for the Houston Press, noticed that many photographs not printed in the daily newspaper were routinely discarded. He received permission to save these images, and by war’s end he had amassed a collection of more than 4,600 photographs. In August 1977, Allison donated his collection to the Arkansas Museum of Science and History”.
Craig shared this unusual FC with me. If you missed this featured FC at theFCConnection, click on the image below to see and learn a little more about this custom FC-170 Power Hoe.
Alex spotted this jeep-as-gathering-spot courtesy of photographer George Silk and Life Magazine. The image was taken in October 1945. I wonder if the film shot by the cameraman on the left still exists.
Over a period of 9 years, between 1993 and 2002, this 1944 MB saw two major restorations. The first, done by owner Richard Grace, was a partial restore, returning the jeep to its MB roots. The second, done by Brian Mead, refined and corrected some of the previous shortcomings.
Click here to learn how the jeep went from this:
Into this:
Admittedly, I know very little about planes. So, maybe I’m the only person who didn’t know that there was a plane that’s called a Jeep? It is the Curtiss AT-9 ‘Jeep’ plane. I discovered it while looking through some old photos at the McCarthur Museum in Arkansas (which I’ll feature in a couple days).
Here’s the photo I initially found. (see the last sentence in the caption). When I first saw the photo, I looked around to see where the jeep was sitting, but the little plane was blocking my view. Then it finally dawned on me that the little plane was the jeep.
Here’s a more recent photo from Wikipedia.
I wish we had some better photos of these. These three photos were shot in 1949 by J.R. Eyerman in Shanghai, China (click on the pics to see the Eyerman credit) for Life Magazine. Interestingly, on this page the credit for the third photo is also, or mistakenly, given to Jack Birns. Also, according to this page, the third photo captures the last tug to leave Shanghai, with credit to Jack as well. According to the folks at G503, these jeeps were used by the shore patrol “to pick up mostly drunks in and was easy to wash out the puke.”
Here’s a good way to celebrate the holidays! You can see more holiday cars here.
Pronounced “Jay-Go”, the Jago Geep was brought to my attention by Robert, who had never seen one either. So, I warmed up my googler this weekend to learn more about them.
According to this Sandero website, British Business Partners Geoff Jago and Richard Park launched the Jago Geep Kit car in 1971, making it one of the first kit cars in the UK. In the same way a dune buggy kit was sold in the US to be placed atop a VW Chassis, the Jago Geep Kit was initially intended to be place onto a Ford Anglia 105E and then later atop the Ford Escort MK1. There were five general variants of the Geep kit produced, but because they are all kits, it is doubtful that any are exactly alike once assembled and individual builder details were added.
In the 1980s, due to illness, Park sold the remainder of the company to Jago. In 1985, 25 specially manufactured kits were produced to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Geep. Sometime in the 1990s, the company changed from the Geep model to the Sandero model, but I haven’t learned why. Most recently, and in the post below, a Series II Land Rover was used as the chassis. You can learn more at the Jago Owners Club.
From the 1984 through 1990 Jago produced a kit car called the Samuri, a four seat utility vehicle designed to fit atop the Ford Escort.
Here’s the nicest looking Jago Geep I’ve seen (so far):
Here’s a Jago Kit used as a drag jeep:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=395G0NXB1zo
See Dave’s Kit Car Here:
Here’s an image of the Jago Samuri:
It was a sunny (finally), but cold day yesterday. So, Colter and I took a quick drive into the hills to smell the coming spring. Here are a couple snapshots.
Here’s another reason to travel to Colombia. Sebastian’s father spotted this gem.
Sebastian writes, “My dad took these pictures today in Rio Negro, Antioquia, Colombia. I have seen Willys being used for almost everything in Colombia, but I never saw this before, a moving coffee shop. Look all the details, the art on the doors and on the tailgate, the speakers (stereo) on the roof, the coffee machine inside, the ketchup on the side, it has everything! The name displayed on the sides reads “Camperito del Café, lo mejor del mundo”, which roughly means the coffee jeep, the best of this world. No doubt about that.”
UPDATE: Back on eBay
(03/25/2011) This is cool! I found pics of a similar one on the CJ-3B Board from Macedonia.
“1960 Jeep CJ-3B Ambulance. It runs and drives. Imported from Turkey. Orange in color. doors still work. Needs fuel tank. Awesome and rare restoration project. Pictures tell it all. Email with any questions. Thanks”
UPDATE: I’m running short of time tonight, so here’s a post from a couple years ago.
Here’s Frank’s flattie and some friends of his who have flatties as well. The picture with multiple jeeps was from a run last October. The next time you are vacationing in Hawaii, keep an eye out for these good looking jeeps.
Ori forwarded me this image take by Danny Koro during a visit to Cuba. You can see the ‘Willys’ stamp on the hood, which indicates the hood has been trimmed. It sure is unusual. You can see more info about the post here: http://www.carsforum.co.il/vb/showthread.php?t=372206
I spotted this image at several sites, but the largest version I found was at edinburghnapiernews.com. I’m gonna guess, based only on the building in the right corner, that this pile of vehicles is somewhere in Europe. Strangely, this image is used as a header image for an article on the importance of recycling and freecycling. And I think the image is supposed to reinforce the importance of recycling and the problems of waste. I believe the irony of the use of this photo with the article is that these vehicles were in fact piled as a first step in their recycling process (for their reuse in steel).
