Last updated on March 29th, 2022 at 10:15 pm
Ah, Memorial Day 2016…the official start of summer! And nothing conjures warm blue skies like an open-topped vehicle — say a convertible…or the classic jeep.
An SUV’s overkill, but the jeep was originally meant to be fast, fun, and light. Well, okay, not “fun;” that was later, thanks to postwar marketing. But just lookit ’em: they practically scream “drive me now!” in some subliminal way — the shape, the open-topped compactness, just how they look all so inviting with no doors (originally) or fairly small perfunctory ones (these days)…it’s as if the designers were too much in a hurry to get movin’!
The Yanks Are Comin’ — With Their Jeeps!
Nothing says “USA” like the car, and nothing says “car” like the original classic jeep from World War II. The Army had invited some hundred and thirty-odd companies to demonstrate working prototypes of its requirements for a light reconnaissance vehicle, but only two responded — and one was still struggling to crawl out from declaring bankruptcy a few years prior! But even with no engineers on staff, this company, American Bantam, managed to secure the initial contract by hiring a talented freelance designer who produced full plans in just two days, with cost estimates taking only one more…and so it was that a working model was built well under the otherwise impossible 49-day turnaround originally stipulated by the Army!
American Bantam, however, was judged too small to meet the massive needs projected and so Ford and another manufacturer, Willys-Overland, were brought in to help produce the jeep. All three companies wound up contributing various different design features, with American Bantam eventually relegated to only making trailers, including for the jeep, for the sake of manufacturing efficiency. And here’s another curious factoid, the most basic one: there is no clear etymology for the word “jeep,” with occurrences going as far back as WW I — and even aircraft was referred to using the word!
The General Purpose Name
Indeed, the Navy’s small escort carriers were also called “jeep carriers,” and a 1942 dictionary of military slang defined “any small plane, helicopter, or gadget” to be a jeep (!). But no one knows from whence the name came — various apocrypha abound, such as “jeep” coming from slurring the government-ese “General Purpose,” but not one’s ever been verified.
General Purpose indeed: jeeps were used for more than just reconnaissance, serving as anything and everything from construction utility vehicles to makeshift field ambulances. There was even a “seep,” a sea-jeep, an amphibious vehicle that saw limited success, being not very good on either land or sea.
Summer Sun and Fun
The jeep didn’t only serve with American armies, but also found duty among British and even Soviet forces — out of well over half a million produced, nearly a full thirty percent went to those two Allies. So this Memorial Day, remember the humble jeep! It’s what’s made your long weekend possible under free and safe skies.
