TRUCKS AND JEEPS
Gussying up the MB Jeep
Daniel Strohl on Dec 19th, 2011
Wally Cohn and Brooks Stevens weren’t the only two men who took a stab at restyling the Willys MB Jeep that proved so capable in World War II. In fact, as we see from a recent reader submission and some research, it was a rather popular activity during and immediately after the war.
Of these restyled Jeeps, we can safely divide them into two distinct sub-groupings. The first, those modified during the war, were done mostly to increase the rider’s comfort. Such is the case with the Jeep that Ed Witos of Fords, New Jersey, was assigned when he was stationed in Germany with the Yankee Division of the 101st Infantry Regiment. Ed wrote:
"I drove the commander of the 101st while we were fighting in the European theater. During that time, we experienced cold, rain, snow, and whatever. With the help of the mechanics in our unit, we modified the fenders as you can see from the photo I attached. It helped in preventing muddy, cold faces at times when driving. Next, we modified or made wind deflectors using material from a damaged fighter plane."With the end of the war, Ed turned the Jeep in at Frankfurt, never to see it again. Others had similar ideas: Turning to Crismon, we see photos of another couple of Jeeps fitted with extended fenders to keep the elements at bay.
Both of these Jeeps are claimed to have been built for General George Patton’s personal use, and both feature a sloping piece of metal fitted to the base of the windshield along with the extended fenders. Crismon described them as “a nightmare of weird shapes, ‘bigger hammer’ bodywork, and close-your-eyes welding.” The first of the two belonged to the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor at Fort Knox, while the second belonged to the U.S. Army Quartermaster in Fort Lee, Virginia.
J.G. Jeudy and M. Tararine highlighted yet another approach to weatherproofing the Jeep in their book, The Jeep. Built by members of the Army’s 644th Ordnance Company, it used salvaged aircraft parts to enclose the cabin.
If you asked servicemen who fought in the war, that’s about all they would have liked see done to the Jeep. Perhaps in response to discussions regarding post-war civilian uses for the Jeep that took place as early as January 1942 (Brooks Stevens famously ran with the idea of a post-war civilian Jeep “victory car” later that year), Popular Science solicited suggestions from its readers on that very topic in 1943-1944 and found that “the idea of prettying up the jeep to serve as a pleasure car drew cries of pain from servicemen. While most of them expressed hopes of owning a jeep after the war, many of them simply for the pleasure of driving it around, the servicemen wanted it to retain its present rugged homeliness.”
Regardless, one respondent chimed in with his drawings of a Jeep-based sports car. While other respondents suggested using the Jeep for farming, ranching, as a third-world ambulance, or as a “fisherman’s folly,” contestant Ray Ring submitted the above rendering of a small, town car-like streamlined Jeep. Ring wanted “accessories manufacturers to sell racy-looking fenders, a convertible top with roof panel that folds forward with the windshield, a grille with removable plates to streamline headlights, combination stop light and strap buckle to hold down folded top, and supplementary arched bumpers.”
Whether Ring’s concept ever made it off the sketchpad we don’t know, but within the next three to four years, others began to envision similarly upstyled Jeeps. Cohn began his work combining Jeeps with Opels in 1946, possibly inspiring the American Command in Germany to sponsor a coachwork competition the next year to give bored GIs something to do. According to Jeudy and Tararine, the competition rules stipulated that the GIs could only use salvaged components to modify their Jeeps, leading to the two Jeeps below.
On the left, the winner of the competition – which reportedly drew 50 entries – built by Ariel M. Hunt of the 344th Ordnance Company. Second prize went to the entry on the right.
Within another couple of years, the CJ and Stevens’s Jeep station wagon conclusively carved a niche for the Jeep in the civilian market, but that didn’t mean the Army was done modifying military Jeeps to add creature comforts and a bit of flair. We’ll leave off with this shot from Crismon of “Snowball,” a Jeep that belonged to the 709th Military Police Service Battalion in Frankfurt in 1949. According to Crismon, “it was used to escort VIPs in early post-war Germany, and was intended to be as flashy as possible. Heavily chromed grille, bumpers, and hubcaps were used, and the bright white paint job could be seen for miles, while the pleated and rolled upholstery and 360-degree visibility made the driver as comfortable as possible.”
Aside from the Patton Jeeps, we’d question whether any of these Jeeps made their way back to the United States, let alone survived to make it into private hands. If anybody knows of any others (or the fates of the above Jeeps), let us know!
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