History of Jeep and Land Rover

[series1buff]

Reading some interesting info regarding vehicles pre-dating the series 1 Land Rover ... the marketing side of it I mean .

The CJ2A Story

The marketing concept of selling a 'all round' small 4X4 workhorse to the man on the land actually came about with the CJ2A Jeep of 1945. The PTO .. low gearing .. all weather top - sound familiar . This was 3 years before the Amsterdam motor show. The CJ2A even had a implement tow bar fitted ...that looks very much same as what Land Rover fitted, or dare I say it 'copied'.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just pointing out the sequence of things .

Mike

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Mike

No doubt that Willys' wanted to find a civilian market for their 4X4 but it would be a far stretch to suggest that Willys invented the implement bar as well.

This was an item of farming equipment from the plough-horse days so that the furrows could be adjusted for the particular crop you were sewing.

I guess it is like the jet engine, developed in 3 different places in the same time-frame.

Diana

[series1buff]

Mike


This was an item of farming equipment from the plough-horse days so that the furrows could be adjusted for the particular crop you were sewing.

I guess it is like the jet engine, developed in 3 different places in the same time-frame.

Diana

Yes your right about the bar and the horse days Diana , but I think the Willys system was the first time a implement bar was factory fitted to a small car ( 1945 ) and marketed as a agricultural attachment. The Wilks team may or may not have been aware of what was going on in the U.S., we'll never know the details - but they definately were not the first to think of the concept as some ill-informed writers would have us believe.

The CJ2A was being sold to the public (1945) well before the Wilks had ever thought of going into that type of market .

Mike

[F4Phantom]

to millions of people the word 'jeep' means willys. (quote from one of the advertisements)

to me they are trying to associate the word jeep with their willys brand, as if jeep was used to describe a vehicle type/category.

This goes well with a discussion on another thread where the english use jeep to describe any small 4x4 looking car with soft top.

My opinion is this is true that in the early days a jeep was originally for all of these style cars but the actual thread has information showing otherwise.