Jeep (Willys)
It's from 1941, before you were born.
- Iconic generation
- 1941 Willys MB
- Origin
- Toledo, Ohio, USA (Willys-Overland)
- Engine
- 134 cu in (2.2L) 'Go Devil' flathead inline-four
- Power
- ~60 hp
- Drivetrain
- Part-time four-wheel drive
- Production
- ~360,000 Willys MBs (1941–1945); ~280,000 Ford GPWs
- Price when new
- $738.74 per unit (first 1941 Army contract)
- Claim to fame
- Ancestor of every modern Jeep and recreational 4x4
About
As of 2026, it's 85 years old.
Few vehicles can claim to have helped win a world war, but the Willys MB earns it. When the US Army needed a light, go-anywhere recon vehicle in 1940, several builders submitted designs; Willys-Overland's won out, largely thanks to one secret weapon — the gutsy 'Go Devil' engine.
That 134-cubic-inch flathead four made just over 60 horsepower, but it had the torque to drag a quarter-ton up a muddy hillside with troops aboard. Combined with four-wheel drive, a fold-flat windshield, and dead-simple construction, the MB could go almost anywhere and be fixed almost anywhere. Eisenhower called it one of the war's decisive tools.
Roughly 360,000 Willys MBs were built, with Ford producing several hundred thousand more to the same blueprint under the designation GPW — and the name 'Jeep' stuck so hard it became the vehicle's actual identity. Soldiers used it as a truck, an ambulance, a gun platform, and occasionally a getaway car.
When the war ended, Willys did the obvious thing and sold the Jeep to civilians as the CJ, inventing the entire recreational 4x4 category in the process. Every rock-crawling Wrangler and weekend trail rig traces its DNA straight back to that olive-drab wartime workhorse.
Jeep (Willys) through the years
The Army goes shopping
The US Army solicits designs for a light reconnaissance vehicle as war looms.
Willys wins
The 'Go Devil'-powered Willys MB is selected and ordered by the thousands.
Ford joins in
Demand is so high that Ford builds the identical Jeep as the GPW to keep up.
Over half a million made
Combined wartime production tops 600,000 vehicles across both builders.
The civilian CJ
Willys sells the Jeep to the public as the CJ, launching the recreational 4x4 era.
