Ah, Memorial Day 2016…the official start of summer! \u00a0And nothing conjures warm blue skies\u00a0like an open-topped vehicle\u00a0—\u00a0say a convertible…or the classic jeep.<\/p>\n
An SUV’s overkill, but the jeep was originally meant to be fast, fun, and light. \u00a0Well, okay, not “fun;” that was later, thanks to postwar marketing. \u00a0But just lookit ’em: they practically scream “drive me now!” in some subliminal way — the shape, the open-topped compactness, just how they look all so inviting with no doors (originally) or fairly\u00a0small perfunctory ones (these days)…it’s as if the designers were too much in a hurry to get movin’!<\/p>\n
Nothing says “USA” like the car, and nothing says “car” like the original classic jeep from World War II. \u00a0The Army had invited some hundred and thirty-odd companies to demonstrate\u00a0working prototypes of its requirements for\u00a0a light reconnaissance vehicle, but only two responded — and one\u00a0was still struggling to crawl out from declaring bankruptcy a few years prior!\u00a0 But even with no engineers on staff, this company, American Bantam, managed to secure the initial contract by hiring a talented freelance designer who produced full plans in just\u00a0two days, with cost estimates taking only one more…and so it was that a working model was built well under the otherwise impossible 49-day turnaround originally stipulated by the Army!<\/p>\n
American Bantam, however, was judged too small to meet the massive needs projected and so Ford and another manufacturer, Willys-Overland, were brought in to help produce the jeep. \u00a0All three companies wound up contributing various different design features, with American Bantam eventually\u00a0relegated to only making trailers, including for the jeep, for the sake of manufacturing efficiency. \u00a0And here’s another curious factoid, the most basic one: there is no clear etymology for the word “jeep,” with occurrences going as far back as WW I<\/em> — and even aircraft was referred to using the word!<\/p>\n Indeed, the Navy’s small escort carriers were also called “jeep carriers,” and a 1942 dictionary of military slang defined “any small plane, helicopter, or gadget” to be a jeep (!). \u00a0But no one knows from whence the name came — various apocrypha abound, such as “jeep” coming from slurring the government-ese “General Purpose,” but not one’s ever been verified.<\/p>\n General Purpose indeed: jeeps were used for more than just reconnaissance, serving as anything and everything from construction utility vehicles to makeshift field ambulances. \u00a0There was even a “seep,” a sea-jeep, an amphibious vehicle that saw limited success, being not very good on either land or sea.<\/p>\n The jeep didn’t only serve with American armies, but also found duty among British and even Soviet forces — out of well over half a million produced, nearly a full thirty percent went to those two Allies. \u00a0So this Memorial Day, remember the humble jeep! \u00a0It’s what’s made your long weekend possible under free and safe skies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy Memorial Day! And it’s all thanks to our vets and in no small part their vehicles…here’s our humble tribute this year to those who served.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","tag-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe General Purpose Name<\/h4>\n
Summer Sun and Fun<\/h4>\n