UPDATE: After spotting an ad I hadn’t published yet (seen below), I realized that there was Desert Dog history that existed among various posts. So, this combines all that into more of a narrative.
==========================
If you have read eWillys for any length of time, you know I’ve been a fan of Desert Dog tires for years. I still have eight desert dogs, some solid lettering and some outlined, as shown in the pic below:
According to Louis Larson, the Desert Dog tire was launched in 1970. He knows this, because in 1970 he became the first person to test out the new style of tires (see the bottom of this CJ-3B Page article). The tires were given to Louis for testing and photographing.
David Maxwell, a former Formula tires salesman, reported that the tires were always made by Armstrong, but marketed through the Formula brand, the president of which was a friend of David’s (see David’s comment and many others on this post). The company made a large number of retreads, so a number of tires also had Firestone on the side, too.
The tires proved popular quickly. Les Schwab was a big fan of them and ran them on his jeep (jeeps?). He also sold both new and retread tires out of his main shop in Prineville (see Les Schwab’s biography here).
For PNW jeepers, the tires were a perfect blend for racing and for jeeping and the varied terrains of the PNW (sand, gravel, rocks, mountain sides, mud, etc … as Joe1148 highlights in his comment here .. though I can attest to it as well). On the downside, their road life was short (some estimate about 10k miles) and they tended to be noisy. The tires’ popularity gained them prominence, and soon they were added to charts showing tire options, such as this January 1972 ad:
By 1973, Desert Dogs were being advertised in Four Wheeler Magazine (ads at the bottom of this post) and sold across the country. This Smith Jeep, Inc. ad from North Franklin, Connecticut, in the July 1973 issue of Four Wheeler Magazine is one example of an East Coast offering:
Eventually, the Formula brand expand its offering. I don’t know when each of these tires was introduced (I think this ad is from 1975, but have to confirm it), but Formula was soon offering more tires choices:
Continue reading →
