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