54 Any GI will tell you that the standard Jeep front seats are very uncomfortable after a while. However, they’re much preferred over the back seat, which is situated right over the rear axle, guaranteeing a rough ride and supposedly even bringing on a case of the piles. Officers usually rode in the front passenger seat and left their underlings to suffer in the back seat. Generals who liked to be in control would even drive, letting their “driver” have the front passenger seat.
55 The military Jeep body was built of low-carbon steel, which was 18 gauge for the exterior body panels and 16 gauge for the floor. The body was bolted to the frame via 16 bolts. Initially, the builders inserted rubber dampers between the body and the frame at the bolt holes to help insulate noise. After a while, wartime restrictions on rubber were instituted because India was under Japanese occupation, and that was where most rubber came from. The situation forced Willys to change to fabric shims. As a side note, the wartime shortage of rubber was also the impetus to the invention of synthetic rubber.
56 The World War II–era army Jeep didn’t come with the tailgate that’s so familiar to Jeepers. Although a tailgate would have been a useful feature, adding one would have raised the vehicle’s cost and forced the company to add extra bracing to the body, which in turn would have increased the weight. The fold-down tailgate didn’t appear in production until mid-1945, when the first civilian Jeeps began to trickle down the assembly lines.
57 Although both the Bantam and Willys Quad prototypes had onepiece windshields, the army decided to standardize the two-piece windshield seen on the Ford GP vehicles. Willys basically copied the design for its MA vehicles. All the prototypes had fold-down windshields, but in my opinion Ford appears to have been the inspiration for the standardized design.
58 As World War II progressed, Willys-Overland began developing and experimenting with a two-passenger baby Jeep featuring a body that would be lightweight and cheap to build because it was made out of plywood! The tiny Jeep included several other ideas to save weight and cost, such as leaving off the headlamps and most of the gauges. Several prototypes were constructed, but after testing, the army ultimately rejected it.
This 1943 photo shows two experimental Jeep MB-Ls flanking a stock MB in Toledo. The MB-L (for “Light”) used cut-down bumpers, plywood body panels, and were stripped of extraneous equipment to reduce weight. They held just two passengers.
59 Determined to win as much wartime business as it could, in 1942 Willys management delivered to the army an experimental six-wheel Jeep, configured as a 6x6 cargo truck and built on a lengthened and beefed-up Willys MB chassis. Capable of hauling 1 ton of cargo or troops, it’s not certain what became of the prototype.
In an effort to gain business, Willys engineered this 6x6 Jeep truck. However, the army already had many other truck suppliers and decided not to use it.
60 During the war, an amphibious Jeep was also produced: the GP-A (for amphibious). Popularly known as the Seep (for sea-going Jeep), it was designed and built by a joint venture of four-wheel-drive truck specialist Marmon-Herrington and boatbuilder Sparkman and Stevens. This was not a Willys-Overland project.
Built around a Ford GPW, it was hurried into production before adequate testing was completed. The Seep’s much heavier weight put a strain on the 4-cylinder engine, hurting on-road acceleration and performance. In the water, a propeller was used to power the vehicle, but here too the little Seep was slow.
It also suffered from insufficient freeboard, a result of underestimating the GPW’s weight during the design phase, so it could easily be swamped in stormy waters. In the European theater, it wasn’t popular with GIs because they found it wasn’t very good for the rivers there, which often had steep banks that the Seep had difficulty overcoming.
Seep production was stopped after some 12,778 were produced. A lot of the vehicles were shipped to Russia, where they were better suited to the country’s low-lying rivers.
61 Not all Jeeps are created equal, at least in the eyes of today’s collectors. Among military vehicle buffs the early slat-grille Jeeps are worth more money that the later stamped-grille type, mainly because of their rarity. According to published sources, the stamped grille went into production in March 1942. Interestingly, there’s not a big price differential between the Willys MB and the Ford GPW. It probably comes down to the fact that Ford guys like Ford Jeeps and Willys guys like Willys Jeeps.
62 In many wartime photos of Jeep vehicles, you notice a vertical metal bar attached to the front bumper and rising to a height of about 5 feet or so. Probably you have wondered what it’s for. It seems that right after the Normandy invasion German soldiers came up with a nasty trick: They strung metal wires across the roads so that anyone driving in an open Jeep would have their neck snapped. It wasn’t long before enterprising GIs began welding the thick bars to the front of their Jeeps in order to break the wires before they could kill any more soldiers.
63 In the postwar era, the next-generation 1950–1951 military M38 Jeep (aka the Willys MC) received improvements that included a 24-volt electrical system, a one-piece windshield, and a tailgate. The tailgate was easy to add, of course, because it had been developed for the civilian CJ-2A. After the M-38A1 (aka the Willys MD) appeared in 1952–1953, many of the MCs were sold as surplus because the army realized the new M-38A1 was superior.
64 Ever hear of an M-38E1? It was a prototype military Jeep developed by Willys-Overland that bridged the gap between the flat-fender M38 and round-fender M-38A1. Designed in 1951, it combined the body tub of an M38 with unique front fenders that were flat on top but rounded on the edges. To provide the increased power that the military was asking for, it was equipped with the tall F-head fourbanger. In order to make that engine fit, the hood is tall but has a rounded appearance much like the M-38A1.
Another military prototype was the 1953 Jeep Bobcat. Similar in size to the earlier MB-L, this model was likewise a two-seater but light-ened to make it easier to transport by air.
The M-38E1 came within a whisker of being produced for the army, but in the end the M-38A1 was created and became the new standard army Jeep. The M-38A1 offered everything the M-38E1 did as far as mechanical improvement, but provided much more interior room with less weight.
65 Driving a World War II–era army Jeep in the winter was cold. The soft top gave little protection from freezing weather. Although a fair number of Jeeps were given homemade enclosed bodies built by enterprising GIs, a serious effort to “winterize” the Jeep didn’t occur until after the war when US occupation forces contracted with vehicle builder Steyr in Austria to refurbish Jeeps and build enclosed cabs for them. The new cabs were extremely well built, and that wasn’t surprising because the Austrian company that had built them had previously produced military trucks and staff cars for the German army.
66 Mention military Jeeps and most people think of the Jeep MB of World War II. Realistically, the category also includes the M-series trucks based on the civilian Forward Control Jeeps. There were four basic models: the M-676 was a standard two-door pickup, the M-677 was a four-door crew cab pickup, the M-678 was a van/carryall, and the M-679 Ambulance was similar looking but without rear side windows. Production began in 1964. These vehicles, when you can find one today, are highly collectible.
67 Perhaps the rarest military Jeep of all is dubbed the CJ-4M, a military prototype based on the proposed civilian CJ-4 and related to the M-38E1. How many were built? Perhaps as few as one or two. Photos you may see on the internet show a dark-colored military prototype with a snorkel kit, which may be the civilian model with a new paint job, as well as a long-wheelbase ambulance-type vehicle. So far, only