By: Mark Neustedt
The history of the jeep goes back about 65 years to around the 1940s. It was after World War I, that the US Army knew that they needed a vehicle that could go anywhere. In 1940 the army put out the specifications for a vehicle they believed would be the vehicle of the army’s future.
There were over 130 U.S. auto manufacturers that were asked to place their bids for the first 70 jeeps for the U.S. army. The first jeep delivered to the army was from the Bantam Company and was called the Model 60, or better known as the MKII.
Shortly after this Willys Overland and Ford delivered their first model to the army. They were the Quad from Willys and the Ford Pigmy. Each company built 1500 units of each model for the army to field test. Each model was modified after field-testing and became the Bantam 40 BRC, the Ford GP and the Willys MA.
Willys won the army’s contract to build a model that combined the best of all three models and was named the MP.
It was not long after this that WWII broke out and Ford was brought in to build the GPW.
Not long after WWII Willys built the first civilian version of the jeep, the CJ2A and soon after that came the CJ-3A. It wasn’t until 1970 that the well-known CJ-5 was built and this is when the history of the jeep began to take off.
In 1986 the jeep wrangler YJ was introduced and by 1996 there were a total of 632,231 of the YJs built. It was in 1997 that the jeep TJ was built and is still the jeep of choice today.
The newest jeep that was introduced in 2004.5 is the jeep wrangler unlimited. The wrangler unlimited is 15 inches longer than the jeep TJ with 13 inches added to the rear cargo area and an extra 2 inches added to the rear seat area for some much needed extra leg room.
