I hope that you have enjoyed this monograph on the famous Jeep marque,and as an unusual footnote here is a picture of the ML Flying Jeep produced in World War 2,yes she actually flew towed behind another vehicle !
So to wrap up the history here goes-
This leaves us with the question as to the origins of the name 'Jeep',well reference has already been made to the name GP (General Purpose) associations of the Ford built version but there are also further sides to this story,it is worthy recording for instance,that the 1939 Minneapolis Moline,the product of a Minnisota tractor company,produced a four wheel drive military vehicle which was nicknamed Jeep in its 1939 Army trials,then on March 16th,1941 the Washington Post published an article on the four wheel drive reconnaisance cars calling them Jeeps and from this point there was to be no turning back,this word effectively entered the vocabulary of the Second World War and is still going strong.
Yet ironically and maybe inevitably,Karl Probst,who died in 1963 and was largely responsible for that first Bantam jeep,is little knbown today despite the fact that the type of vehicle he created continues in production 64 years later after the American army took delivery of the first experimental example.
Long live the concept of this rugged vehicle the name of which has become an household name.
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