Thread: Boys oh and Girls It's nearly time to go Dr Who starts soon

Originally Posted by F4Phantom

and rightly so, from memory jeep is a word used to describe a style of car, in scrapheap challenge they also refer to suzuki soft tops as jeeps, its just that the americans always brand common terms to turn them commercial.

Not quite:

Jeep is an automobile marque (and registered trademark) of Chrysler.

Origin of the term "jeep"

There are many explanations of the origin of the word "jeep," which have proven difficult to verify. Probably the most popular notion holds that the vehicle bore the designation "GP" (for "Gov. Purposes" or "General Purpose"), which was phonetically slurred into the word jeep. However, R. Lee Ermey, on his television series Mail Call, disputes this, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, was never referred to as "General Purpose", and that the name may have been derived from Ford's nomenclature referring to the vehicle as GP (G for government-use, and P to designate its 80-inch (2,000 mm) wheelbase). "GP" does appear in connection with the vehicle in the mode TM 9-803 manual, which describes the vehicle as a machine and the vehicle is designated a "GP" in TM 9-2800, Standard Motor Vehicles, September 1, 1949, but whether the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with either of these manuals is open to debate.

This account may confuse the jeep with the nickname of another series of vehicles with the GP designation. The Electro-Motive Division of General Motors, a maker of railroad locomotives, introduced its "General Purpose" line in 1949, using the GP tag. These locomotives are commonly referred to as Geeps, pronounced the same way as "Jeep."

Many, including Ermey, suggest that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicles that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a cartoon character that "could go anywhere".[1]

The term "jeep" was first commonly used during World War I (1914–1918) by soldiers as a slang word for new recruits and for new unproven vehicles. This is according to a history of the vehicle for an issue of the U.S. Army magazine, Quartermaster Review, which was written by Maj. E. P. Hogan. He went on to say that the slang word "jeep" had these definitions as late as the start of World War II.

"Jeep" had been used as the name of a small tractor made by Moline.

The term "jeep" would eventually be used as slang to refer to an airplane, a tractor used for hauling heavy equipment, and an autogyro. When the first models of the jeep came to Camp Holabird for tests, the vehicle did not have a name yet. Therefore the soldiers on the test project called it a jeep. Civilian engineers and test drivers who were at the camp during this time were not aware of the military slang term. They most likely were familiar with the character Eugene the Jeep and thought that Eugene was the origin of the name. The vehicle had many other nicknames at this time such as Peep (the term originally used in the Armored Force), Pygmy, and Blitz-Buggy, although because of the Eugene association, Jeep stuck in people's minds better than any other term.

Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, a dictionary of military slang, published in 1942, in the library at The Pentagon gives this definition:

Jeep: A four-wheel drive car of one-half to one-and-one-half ton capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty. A term applied to the bantam-cars, and occasionally to other motor vehicles (U.S.A.) in the Air Corps, the Link Trainer; in the armored forces, the ½ ton command car. Also referred to as "any small plane, helicopter, or gadget."

Early in 1941, Willys-Overland demonstrated the vehicle's ability by having it drive up the U.S. Capitol steps, driven by Willy's test driver Irving "Red" Haussman, who had recently heard soldiers at Fort Holabird calling it a "jeep." When asked by syndicated columnist Katherine Hillyer for the Washington Daily News (or by a bystander, according to another account) what it was called, Irving answered, "It's a jeep."

Katherine Hillyer's article was published on February 20, 1941 around the nation and included a picture of the vehicle with the caption:

LAWMAKERS TAKE A RIDE- With Senator Meade, of New York, at the wheel, and Representative Thomas, of New Jersey, sitting beside him, one of the Army's new scout cars, known as "jeeps" or "quads," climbs up the Capitol steps in a demonstration yesterday. Soldiers in the rear seat for gunners were unperturbed.

This exposure caused all other jeep references to fade, leaving the 4x4 truck with the name.

Willys-Overland Inc. was later awarded the sole privilege of owning the name "Jeep" as registered trademark, by extension, merely because it originally had offered the most powerful engine.

From wikipedia

I think what he means is that now its pretty much a generic term for any offroad vehicle - wether its correct or not.

thanks loanrangie. I suppose to elaborate, although we all know the word Jeep is owned by a usa car company, in england (the land of tradition) where they dont neccessarily change the way they do things because a company on tv tells them to, I have observed they can tend to use words slightly differently to us and a lot differently to the US. They use the word jeep fairly generically as we have already noted they called a LR a jeep and a suzuki a jeep. I am sure they call many other cars a jeep (what about the tata jeep rip off or the rocsta). My uncle in the netherlands owned a cherokee, when he went to trade it in, no one in the dealership had ever heard of or seen a jeep before (and didnt know what to do with it), so I can probably assume that up untill now jeeps are not a big brand over there (Europe) so the word may not have become commercialised, or as commercialised as it is here and in the us.

Personally I find it a breath of fresh air as I cannot stand usa car companies and all the crap they try to shove on the world.