WI: Ford Keeps Producing Jeeps

kernals12

Banned
The WW2 Jeep was, and still is an icon. The humble nameplate has switched hands 3 times (from Willys to Kaiser in 1963, to AMC in 1968, and finally to Chrysler in 1988) and has grown into a full lineup of SUVs that have proven to be incredibly profitable. But one thing that's forgotten is that the Willys design was also produced by Ford during the war. So what if Ford had keep building them after the war ended? It probably would've shored up the company in the late 40s.
 
Ford would have had to pay Willys a licensing fee since Willy's owned the trademark. Doubt the market back then would have supported two manufacturers for that type of vehicle. Sedans and coupes were the popular vehicles.
 
Ford would have had to pay Willys a licensing fee since Willy's owned the trademark. Doubt the market back then would have supported two manufacturers for that type of vehicle. Sedans and coupes were the popular vehicles.

Jeep” became a registered trademark of Willys-Overland in 1950
(1945-1949) Willys CJ-2A
Production Total: 214,760

CJ-2A.jpg

CJ-2A Illustration


With the close of WWII now eminent, Willys-Overland began to consider the development of a civilian jeep that it could market beyond the scope of the militarized MB, leading to the first mass-production of the CJ-2A in 1945. First drafts of the CJ-2A included the CJ-1 and CJ-2 (AgriJeep), of which only 6 are known to have survived.

The CJ-2A resembled its military ancestor closely, with a tailgate and side mounted spare tire. However, there are certain characteristics of the CJ-2A that make it easier to distinguish from the Willys MB; most notably with regard to the headlights (which on the CJ-2A are larger and flush-mounted) and the grille (now a seven-slot grille as opposed to the nine-slot MB grille)

So the Ford GPW would have a 9 slot grille
MB-Grille1.jpg

and might have this under the hood
flatv8jeep-jpg.1196561

Flathead V8

used to be a conversion kit for this, back in the '50s
 

kernals12

Banned
Ford would have had to pay Willys a licensing fee since Willy's owned the trademark. Doubt the market back then would have supported two manufacturers for that type of vehicle. Sedans and coupes were the popular vehicles.
The market was big enough that Willys chose to stop all passenger car production in favor of the Jeeps. Even in the 1940s, SUVs were extremely profitable.
 
Wasn’t that more a case that Willys-Overland had been basically annihilated in the car market before the war and couldn’t find any way back into the market other than trying to sell civilian versions of the only vehicles it had a running production line for. Their plans to restart production of ‘proper’ cars didn’t come to fruition until the fifties and so the Jeep was all there was.
 
Wasn’t that more a case that Willys-Overland had been basically annihilated in the car market before the war and couldn’t find any way back into the market other than trying to sell civilian versions of the only vehicles it had a running production line for. Their plans to restart production of ‘proper’ cars didn’t come to fruition until the fifties and so the Jeep was all there was.

They had these
willys%201939%20Overland-02.jpg
plus Sedans and Wagon,
file-20160224104716_1940_Willys_cars.jpg

a pickup and van
file-20160224104738_1940_Willys_cars.jpg

for 1940

Those dies should have been around.

They weren't wrecked like Cord/Auburn, Hupmobile or Graham-Paige
 
This was actually the case for a few decades in Brazil. What happened was that Willys-Overland do Brasil had run into a lot of problems during the '60s, and Ford Motor Company soon purchased the company as Kaiser Motors was leaving the country. What happened was that some Willys-Overland products (especially the Jeep) continued production for a while until replaced with Ford products - all except the Corcel. It turns out that Willys-Overland do Brasil also licence-built Renault vehicles for the Brazilian market, and had Willys-Overland remained in existence (or became Renault's Brazilian subsidiary) it would have been a Brazilian version of the Renault 12. Ford inherited the project, launched it two years earlier than Renault, then retained it (the wonders of a protected market) as a mainstay of Ford's Brazilian lineup for several decades, with spinoffs continuing in production well into the 1990s. Such was also the case of the Willys Jeep, which became the "Ford Jeep Rural" in Brazil (based on the CJ-5) upon the conversion of Willys-Overland do Brasil into Ford do Brasil SA, which lasted well into 1983.
 
They had these

Those dies should have been around.

They weren't wrecked like Cord/Auburn, Hupmobile or Graham-Paige
Yes, but they would have been going head-first into a ford lineup based on their 1941 models, plus whatever GM and Chrysler had lined up.

Willys was well on the road to irrelevance by WW2, I think they made something like 30,000 cars in 1939 versus half a million fords and lord only knows how much GM and Chrysler. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were shifting about the same volumes as Packard but with low-margin bread and butter models.

Resuming full automobile production when no one was certain whether there would be a post war boom or a return to the lean years was, I think, just too big a gamble for them to contemplate when they could keep the jeep line rolling and try to find buyers while figured out whether they had a market to return to.

If one risks believing Wikipedia they planned to get back in the shark pool for 1947, bottled that, resumed cars finally in 1952 and promptly got bought by Kaiser Motors (itself composed largely of the wrecked carcass of Graham-Page) which then almost immediately threw in the towel and bailed from the passenger car market. So I really don’t think that 40s-50s 4x4s were a goldmine, just that it was the only niche they could find to shelter in while the big 3 killed everything in sight.
 
Yes, but they would have been going head-first into a ford lineup based on their 1941 models, plus whatever GM and Chrysler had lined up.

Willys was well on the road to irrelevance by WW2, I think they made something like 30,000 cars in 1939 versus half a million fords and lord only knows how much GM and Chrysler. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were shifting about the same volumes as Packard but with low-margin bread and butter models.

Resuming full automobile production when no one was certain whether there would be a post war boom or a return to the lean years was, I think, just too big a gamble for them to contemplate when they could keep the jeep line rolling and try to find buyers while figured out whether they had a market to return to.

If one risks believing Wikipedia they planned to get back in the shark pool for 1947, bottled that, resumed cars finally in 1952 and promptly got bought by Kaiser Motors (itself composed largely of the wrecked carcass of Graham-Page) which then almost immediately threw in the towel and bailed from the passenger car market. So I really don’t think that 40s-50s 4x4s were a goldmine, just that it was the only niche they could find to shelter in while the big 3 killed everything in sight.
Thing was, that was deliberately missing the boat.

Production Figures for 1942
Chevrolet 254885
Ford 160432
Plymouth 152427
Buick 92573
Pontiac 83555
Dodge 68522
Oldsmobile 67783
Studebaker 50678
Hudson 40661
Chrysler 36586
Packard 33776
Nash 31780
DeSoto 24015
Mercury 22816
Cadillac 16511
Lincoln 6547

1947
Chevrolet 671546
Ford 429674
Plymouth 382290
Buick 272827
Dodge 243160
Pontiac 230600
Oldsmobile 193895
Studebaker 161496
Chrysler 119260
Nash 101000
Hudson 92038
DeSoto 87000
Mercury 85383
Kaiser 70474
Frazer 68775
Willys 65078
Cadillac 61926

It was a race to fill that demand for the '46 Model year, with every GI wanting a car when discharged, and years of deferred demand that would explode once the War was over for everyone who stayed on the homefront.

Those folks had saved up money during the war, and they now wanted Homes, durable goods, and most important, autos.

so you had the Big Three, and everybody else, plus the new Brands, from the tiny Crosley to the Tucker and Kaiser-Frazer that were all new, to try and get in on the postWar sales boom.
Except the Willys-Overland line,

just after the war, any new car, even if a relabeled '42 Model Year, got sales if they could be delivered

Willy-Overland had a niche before the war: they just ignored it, and put all hopes on Jeep- but only expected to sell to Farmers, so didn't produce a lot at first, till they got swamped with orders

And then, botched that, having only two colors Tan and Green, that wasn't Olive Drab. Didn't even have Henry Ford's Black till 1947, when they started to bring out the Jeep Panel Delivery and Truck, the year after the 2WD only Station Wagon was released

1945 1824(mostly MBs converted to CJ-2A)
1946 71554
1947 65078
 
Thing was, that was deliberately missing the boat.

Production Figures for 1942
Chevrolet 254885
Ford 160432
Plymouth 152427
Buick 92573
Pontiac 83555
Dodge 68522
Oldsmobile 67783
Studebaker 50678
Hudson 40661
Chrysler 36586
Packard 33776
Nash 31780
DeSoto 24015
Mercury 22816
Cadillac 16511
Lincoln 6547

1947
Chevrolet 671546
Ford 429674
Plymouth 382290
Buick 272827
Dodge 243160
Pontiac 230600
Oldsmobile 193895
Studebaker 161496
Chrysler 119260
Nash 101000
Hudson 92038
DeSoto 87000
Mercury 85383
Kaiser 70474
Frazer 68775
Willys 65078
Cadillac 61926

It was a race to fill that demand for the '46 Model year, with every GI wanting a car when discharged, and years of deferred demand that would explode once the War was over for everyone who stayed on the homefront.

Those folks had saved up money during the war, and they now wanted Homes, durable goods, and most important, autos.

so you had the Big Three, and everybody else, plus the new Brands, from the tiny Crosley to the Tucker and Kaiser-Frazer that were all new, to try and get in on the postWar sales boom.
Except the Willys-Overland line,

just after the war, any new car, even if a relabeled '42 Model Year, got sales if they could be delivered

Willy-Overland had a niche before the war: they just ignored it, and put all hopes on Jeep- but only expected to sell to Farmers, so didn't produce a lot at first, till they got swamped with orders

And then, botched that, having only two colors Tan and Green, that wasn't Olive Drab. Didn't even have Henry Ford's Black till 1947, when they started to bring out the Jeep Panel Delivery and Truck, the year after the 2WD only Station Wagon was released

1945 1824(mostly MBs converted to CJ-2A)
1946 71554
1947 65078

I'm kind of surprised they built jeeps at all for the first couple years post war. I would have figured there'd be so many war surplus jeeps that the market would be flooded. I mean why buy a new one when you could buy one that got made in 44 and sat in a base in New Jersey for the war for a third the price.
 
so you had the Big Three, and everybody else, plus the new Brands, from the tiny Crosley to the Tucker and Kaiser-Frazer that were all new, to try and get in on the postWar sales boom.
Except the Willys-Overland line,

just after the war, any new car, even if a relabeled '42 Model Year, got sales if they could be delivered
So what’s the explanation then, that Willys management were the only bunch of chuckleheads in the entire US auto industry that couldn’t manage to pick up a pile of money lying in front of them? The fate of all those other “everybody else” you mentioned suggests that it wasn’t quite as easy as you make it out to be. The run up to WW2 was littered with the corpses of small independents and the few survivors didn’t do well afterwards. Those that managed to get production going again picked up a lot of sales, but had to bid for sheet metal, components and labour against everybody else which put them at a disadvantage vs the big players. Then once the immediate frenzy was over they had to go nose-to-nose against the big 2+1 that had carefully cherry-picked the best of their brand-new war-expansion plants to retain and were in absolute tip-top fighting form.

What was Willys ‘niche’ before the war? What was their unique pitch other than “not one of the big 3, and not Studebaker or Hudson or Nash either”? How do they sell themselves after the war beyond “have wheels and a motor, usually starts and runs?” As far as I know they weren’t amazingly styled, or great quality, or high tech, or notably cheap. They were just meh, and consequently they were dying and knew it. After the war they finally had a special “thing” to hide behind, 4x4 and the Jeep heritage. Unfortunately while that bought them a little time, they never solved their competitive problems and disappeared down the maw of a long succession of companies taking it in turn to show that the US can only reliably support two major automotive manufacturers.
 
So what’s the explanation then, that Willys management were the only bunch of chuckleheads in the entire US auto industry that couldn’t manage to pick up a pile of money lying in front of them? The fate of all those other “everybody else” you mentioned suggests that it wasn’t quite as easy as you make it out to be. The run up to WW2 was littered with the corpses of small independents and the few survivors didn’t do well afterwards. Those that managed to get production going again picked up a lot of sales, but had to bid for sheet metal, components and labour against everybody else which put them at a disadvantage vs the big players. Then once the immediate frenzy was over they had to go nose-to-nose against the big 2+1 that had carefully cherry-picked the best of their brand-new war-expansion plants to retain and were in absolute tip-top fighting form.

What was Willys ‘niche’ before the war? What was their unique pitch other than “not one of the big 3, and not Studebaker or Hudson or Nash either”? How do they sell themselves after the war beyond “have wheels and a motor, usually starts and runs?” As far as I know they weren’t amazingly styled, or great quality, or high tech, or notably cheap. They were just meh, and consequently they were dying and knew it. After the war they finally had a special “thing” to hide behind, 4x4 and the Jeep heritage. Unfortunately while that bought them a little time, they never solved their competitive problems and disappeared down the maw of a long succession of companies taking it in turn to show that the US can only reliably support two major automotive manufacturers.

All selling stuff in 46 and 47 does is cashflow before the Big Three would retool for new styled '48, that to be honest were still not all that different than the '42s. 'Low Longer and Wider' was just around the corner, along with OHV V8s

Looks at what Kaiser and Frazer did with with the bones of Hupmobile and Graham-Paige. Frazer was out soon, leaving Kaiser, who really had no clue on how the Auto business worked after 1946. an ex-Ford guy, whos name I now forget, took his place at W-O

Before Frazer had left Willys during the War to go over to Graham-Paige, he had gotten W-O as a 14th-16 rank Marque thru the '30s

Their niche was 'costs less to buy and operate than a Chevy, while looking similar to a Ford' and were solidly reliable, high MPG for the era, had seven models, from a business coupe to trucks and vans. With the '41s and limited number of '42s, having switched over to Jeep Production already(ahead of the other manufactures) made over 28,000 civilian vehicles, and just below Lincoln for '42 model production

So War was over, and car hungry GIs, who had been impressed by how the Willys MB Jeep ran(better than Ford GPW, the W-O enthusiasts claimed) Might have looked into getting something else than a Jeep for 1946 from Willys-Overland

But the Ford guy running W-O, thought to aim the Jeep at Farmers and Construction industry. They had to rush out the Wagon to have something else besides the CJ, Civilian Jeep, for '1946

Eventually the Willys Passenger tooling was sent to Brazil, that lasted thru the 1970 model year. They were well liked there.
 
I'm kind of surprised they built jeeps at all for the first couple years post war. I would have figured there'd be so many war surplus jeeps that the market would be flooded. I mean why buy a new one when you could buy one that got made in 44 and sat in a base in New Jersey for the war for a third the price.

To avoid the WWI surplus hit on new vehicles, the surplus Jeeps were cut up, and sold as kits in the USA. Complete WWII Jeeps were hard to come by. Most were scrapped postwar where they were used.
After the War, many ended up in Japan for scrapping
jeep_boneyard_6in.jpg


The ads for Surplus Jeeps were mostly bogus
http://wwiijeepparts.com/Archives/WW2JeepsInCrates.html
 
To avoid the WWI surplus hit on new vehicles, the surplus Jeeps were cut up, and sold as kits in the USA. Complete WWII Jeeps were hard to come by. Most were scrapped postwar where they were used.
After the War, many ended up in Japan for scrapping
jeep_boneyard_6in.jpg


The ads for Surplus Jeeps were mostly bogus
http://wwiijeepparts.com/Archives/WW2JeepsInCrates.html

Didn't they make hundreds of thousands of the things? They scrapped that damned many?
 

Driftless

Donor
Some ended their careers as Jeepneys
When American troops began to leave the Philippines at the end of World War II, hundreds of surplus Jeeps were sold or given to the Filipinos. An American soldier named Harry Stonehill was involved in the disposal of military surplus, and reportedly created a black market for the surplus including jeeps.[8] The Jeeps were stripped down and altered locally: metal roofs were added for shade; and the vehicles decorated in vibrant colours with chrome-plated ornaments on the sides and hood.

Similar, if less colorful, conversions from military to civilian use were done elsewhere too.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
Ford would have had to pay Willys a licensing fee since Willy's owned the trademark. Doubt the market back then would have supported two manufacturers for that type of vehicle. Sedans and coupes were the popular vehicles.
^ This.

Henry Ford would have had a conniption fit and died two year sooner at the very thought.
 
^ This.

Henry Ford would have had a conniption fit and died two year sooner at the very thought.

My post upthread shows W-O didn't get that Trademark till 1950, so there was a window for a Civilian GPW from Ford. The thread has kind of gone off on what Willys was doing, not Ford

A Ford also doing a Jeep would have ruined W-O even sooner, leading them to a Kaiser or somebody else takeover or outright failure.

Though even if they split the market of OTL 200k CJ-2A sales, maybe there is enough for W-O to survive in Toledo, but it doesn't look good.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm kind of surprised they built jeeps at all for the first couple years post war. I would have figured there'd be so many war surplus jeeps that the market would be flooded. I mean why buy a new one when you could buy one that got made in 44 and sat in a base in New Jersey for the war for a third the price.
More like 1/10. Jeeps that were effectively Brand new were being sold right on the docks along the West Cost for $100 to veterans, or so the story went (a 1947 Ford "Super Deluxe 4 door sedan was $1,440 brand new).

What did happen though was other government agencies Federal, then state, then local had first pick. After that the vets had their chance. In 1946 10,000 vets showed up, even camped overnight, in Benicia (today this is where thousands of Japanese imports are off loaded, oh, the irony) to grab a jeep. Most didn't get one. but the government market for jeeps, 6x6, 5 tons, pick-ups, etc. was just flat dead for 10 years.
 
More like 1/10. Jeeps that were effectively Brand new were being sold right on the docks along the West Cost for $100 to veterans, or so the story went (a 1947 Ford "Super Deluxe 4 door sedan was $1,440 brand new).

What did happen though was other government agencies Federal, then state, then local had first pick. After that the vets had their chance. In 1946 10,000 vets showed up, even camped overnight, in Benicia (today this is where thousands of Japanese imports are off loaded, oh, the irony) to grab a jeep. Most didn't get one. but the government market for jeeps, 6x6, 5 tons, pick-ups, etc. was just flat dead for 10 years.

Makes sense. Planes saw massive and rampant increases in technology and capability so once the cold war started up they were constantly becoming obsolete and being replaced. Logistical vehicles didn't advance nearly as fast and a truck built in 1945 could still provide perfectly fine service for multiple decades or they wore out.

When did the US military finally retire Sherman tanks?
 
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