Paul Bruno Reveals the Surprising Truth About the Jeep Name
Paul Bruno returns to Jeep Talk Show with the expanded edition of The Original Jeeps and the 3,500-page FTC court case that became the holy grail of early Jeep history. We cover how the name “Jeep” started as Army slang, how Willys almost got eliminated three times, and how Bantam, Willys, and Ford went from handmade prototypes to the MB and GPW. If you care about the first quarter-ton 4×4, the Beasley-Brown drawing, and the real paper trail from 1940–1942, this interview is loaded.
Timestamps
Key Highlights
- The wartime FTC trial produced 3,500+ pages of sworn testimony from the people who actually designed and built the first Jeeps
- “Jeep” was generic slang before the quarter-ton existed—and the court never found one person who named it
- Willys was nearly kicked out of the program three times and still won the 16,000-unit contract
- June 19, 1940: the Beasley-Brown drawing is named, dated, and explained from the courtroom record
- How the Army forced a Willys license so Ford’s GPW and the Willys MB stayed interchangeable in the field
Like the episode if you picked up something new on early Jeep history. Comment and tell us which part surprised you most—the name, the contract fight, or that court case. Subscribe for more interviews. Books and extras are at originaljeeps.com.
Support the Show & Shop Jeep Gear Thank you for watching and listening! If you enjoyed the conversation with Paul Bruno, consider checking out the books we discussed.
The Original Jeeps (Expanded Edition) by Paul Bruno
View on Amazon
Original Jeeps in Pictures
View on Amazon
The First Jeep: Project Management and History
View on Amazon
Supporting the show through the links at jeeptalkshow.com/amazon helps us keep bringing on guests like Paul and digging into the stories most people never hear.
Episode Transcript
[01:00:00:47 – 01:00:04:40]
Adios, boys and girls. It’s time for another Jeep Talk Show interview. We’re gonna be talking with Paul Bruno.
[01:00:04:40 – 01:00:07:13]
(Explosion)
[01:00:07:13 – 01:01:12:52]
something else. I’ll take it if I get some of his money. Oh, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Recognized as one of the most knowledgeable living experts on the earliest history, origins, concepts, and creation, design, development, implementation, and worldwide delivery of the iconic Jeep vehicle, Paul Bruno has spent 25 years researching, writing, and studying early Jeep history. We have some people on the show that just absolutely adore the early Jeeps. I didn’t get into the whole Jeep thing, get interested in it till I was about 16, 17. So that would have been the CJs. So I really don’t know a lot about the early Jeeps. I’ve learned a lot of it through the show and through some of the individuals that have been on the show like yourself. So I appreciate Edgemacating some of us, including me. Paul has more than 35 years of experience in the fields of project management and information technology. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management and computer software, as well as a master’s degree in business administration and history. Paul was previously on the show, I know you guys are remembering episode 458,
[01:01:14:08 – 01:01:33:58]
and that was October of 2020. Paul, you were just asking me when that was, because it was some time ago. That was, gosh, was that, was COVID going on then? I think it was. I think like January, February, or March, March certainly, I think of 2020 is whenever COVID officially hit the news or big time on the news.
[01:01:35:24 – 01:01:48:09]
That’s correct. And I’ll look forward to catching your audience up on what I’ve been up to since then and link all the pieces together. But one thing I like to say since we kid around here on the Jeep Talk Show is, is luckily I’m not the,
[01:01:49:10 – 01:01:51:48]
recognized as one of the most knowledgeable debt experts.
[01:01:52:58 – 01:02:21:02]
That would have been a short interview. We’re gonna have Paula, but that didn’t work out. We’re not saying it wouldn’t be interesting, it’d just be really short. So for you guys that would like to know the website for the book and where to go and get more information about it, originaljeeps.com, originaljeeps.com. And this, the book we’re gonna be talking about today and the prior book, our books, you can get information there, especially the one from the episode 458 of our past episode.
[01:02:22:57 – 01:03:50:48]
I know you said your ex-wife or, did you say that she had passed? Yeah, it was my late wife, yeah. That your late wife would not approve of me giving you carte blanche. But bring us up today, Paul, the show’s yours. All right, well, she had to live with me. So that, you only had to deal with me for about an hour or less. So you probably can, you’re a strong individual, you can handle that. So let me see if I can connect the dots for your audience in terms of what I’ve been up to. So we’ll go all the way back to the beginning briefly. And I wrote a book about the first Jeep called “Project Management and History,” the first Jeep. And it was written from a project management perspective and it’s more of a case study book. And then in 2019, I decided that really would like to rewrite it as a history book and add, and I realized there was more, Paul Harvey, the rest of the story, there was more to the story. That might be, that’s way back referenced when I was a kid. But, and update the story beyond just the first Jeep. And it’s interesting that you mentioned COVID. So we started in 2019 to do that project and early Jeep history can be broken down into three distinct periods.
[01:03:51:51 – 01:04:50:06]
Basically end of World War I to October, 1940, when the first Jeep was tested and accepted, then October, 1940 to about March, 1941, when they did all the machinations to get the experimental models done. Where they ordered 1500 from Bantam, Ford and Willis, who were the three manufacturers they were dealing with. And then there was a third section from about April, 1941, the January, 1942, where things happened. And so it’s really in three stages and then a lot of stuff going on inside those stages. So the first book covered the first phase to October, 1940. And we had the intention of the second book, which we titled “The Original Jeeps” to go all the way to January, 1942. Well, we got up to March, 1941,
[01:04:51:11 – 01:05:41:32]
and the pandemic hit and everything stopped. And we decided that it would be too hard to complete the work all the way through to January, 1942. So the original edition of the original Jeeps was came out 20 tonne covered through March, 1941, and covered based at the original prototypes and basically how they got to the contract for the 1500 experimental models, which were the BRC 40, Bantam Reconnaissance Car 40, the Willis MA and the Ford GP. And they were the successors to the Bantam Reconnaissance Car prototype, the Willis Quad prototype and the Ford Pygmy prototype. So in the interim from 2020, I realized that “The Original Jeeps” book is very detailed.
[01:05:42:38 – 01:05:54:28]
And it’s kind of a commitment to read. And I said, what can I do to get a easier read out there? So in 2022, I decided to tell the story in images
[01:05:55:28 – 01:06:11:16]
and basically created a book where it’s a caption, a short blurb and the pictures are telling the stories. And it’s something you can read an hour, okay? And it gives people the basic overview. And the other reason I wanted to do that book was,
[01:06:12:47 – 01:06:58:15]
maybe it’s just me and the interest to actually put in there some of the actual documents that no one have ever published or seen from the Jeep procurement like Dan was bid proposal, the June 6th, 1940 memo, we kicked everything off, put the actual document there so the people can read what the words were from the actual people that were the documents they were producing. So that came out and that worked out really well. Finally, this year, really the beginning of this year, I had known for four years, I had that last piece to do between April of 1941 and January 1942 and the same level of detail that I had done before.
[01:06:59:42 – 01:08:47:06]
And I’m gonna mention the court case because that is the core of the book. The court case, which I probably talked about in the prior interview, during the war, the Federal Trade Commission sued Willis Overland for false advertising, say they’d created the Jeep. They did this whole trial, 3,500 plus pages of testimony. 527 exhibits where they basically deposed anyone and anyone, anyone and everyone who had anything to do with the creation and development of the Jeep in 1940 and 1941 in extensive detail, basically a complete oral history of the creation and development of the Jeep. Wow. Exactly. Beautiful. So that’s what I was able to put in the first book and the second book. So what I knew was I’d went to the archives, I knew to do the last portion of the book that they probably had the same level of detail for what they did in 1941, but I’d have to go back and read 3,000 pages of testimony because it’s all buried inside the testimony. It’s not organized in any way. Sure. So what I’ve done since I started this book journey in 2011, I started my journey with early Jeep history in 1999, trying to get a screenplay written, produced about, a movie produced about the creation of the first Jeep. When I found the court case, I’ve seen to be the only one for some odd reason, which it just astonishes me. That thing sat around for 70 years in the, first at the FTC and then at the archives, that no one went in there and realized what this was, a complete oral history by the people who had done the work
[01:08:48:30 – 01:11:15:42]
on the whole creation development of the Jeep in their own words. And the beautiful part about this is, it doesn’t guarantee it’s truthful, but it’s more than likely truthful because they were under oath. So– I like to say it does guarantee that it was truthful as possible because they were under oath. Which is different from other oral histories where, well, you know, you interview me and I’m not under oath, so you might make embellish a few things. I have some wonderful bullshit I can spend till you hear. Exactly, you know. And the other thing that was amazing about it, they’re under oath and you can see when you read the testimony how seriously took it. They were nervous. Some of these people that were testifying, you can actually read it in their words. Well, they had to be very careful. They had to be very careful. They were coming across honestly. It’s wonderful. I mean, that’s a treasure trove. It’s a treasure. I call it the Holy Grail. Yeah. Literally of early Jeep history, this court case, and not only did they have all the testimony for the people, it was also just a few years after they had done everything. It wasn’t like 30 years later. It was done during the war, 1944, 1945. So it was only two or three, four years before. So all the people were alive. All the people still had good memories. And they went through in meticulous detail, okay, of every single phase of the Jeep. So when I read the 3000 pages to create what we call the expanded edition, which is why I’m on your show today, of the original Jeeps, the cover of the period between April, 1941, and January, 1942, they had all the detail in it. On the four major milestones, which were they decided to… They were testing the vehicles, and I have a whole chapter on the testing they did in 1941. I have test reports that they did everything. And I put some of that in there to give people a flavor of how detailed they went into to test those through those experimental models that I mentioned before. They ordered the 1500 experimental models from all three vendors to test them and combine them eventually into one vehicle to have the best vehicle possible as it evolved from the prototypes to the experimental models. Well, then I have all the documentation when they decided we are cutting off the testing and we’re going to go out and get 16,000 of these vehicles. And that’s from a year before, literally, exactly a year, where they were going for 70.
[01:11:17:18 – 01:13:33:29]
And so you see as the evolution progresses, you also see through the testimony how they started to realize this is something they had never dealt with before, because you’re right back with these people in the 1940s, okay, when we’re reading this, the magnitude of World War II had not dawned on any of these people in 1940. Sure. You can see it. It’s like, “We just want 70.” You know, hey, that’s it. And literally a year later, they’re going for 16,000, which is what, 200%, 2000, whatever the numbers are. Oh, that’s a big number difference, yeah. Yeah, big number difference. And so then there was also, and I’ll give you one example, two examples, a tremendous amount of detail on how they evolved to the MB from the MA when Willis won that contract, stuff never before published anywhere, all in the court testimony. And then also the absolute detail on how Ford was brought back into the fold for Jeep production, all the stuff and the new chapters that we wrote to the original Jeeps. And then I found some information that I hadn’t had before. So I updated the current text too with some extra information. But just to give you one example, never published anywhere. In the court, they had the guy testify. Now, this is one of the people, he was one of the key people of the three or four people that worked on the Willis vehicles, that worked on the quad, he worked on the Willis MA, worked on the Willis MB. He went back to the office, they were in Toledo, came back and read into the testimony the 38 major modifications to the Willis MB from the time it went into production to 1944, which 10 pages of beautiful detail of what the change was and when it went into production where you can read through this and it’s in chronological order, exactly how the vehicle evolved during the war in terms of becoming the Willis MB that it was by 1945. It’s unbelievable. That’s nice. That level of detail, it’s nowhere else. And you had no idea, you just, but during the book, you found out about this stuff. I bet you couldn’t believe what you had found. I was stunned. I mean, literally, even after all the other, amazing tidbits, and I’ll just give one from the beginning.
[01:13:34:29 – 01:14:05:23]
Yeah, reading along, and this is what I mean, I have to read the testimony. It’s question, answer, question, answer. You can’t skip any of it. So I’m reading along and I get the page, TAY91, and it goes, “Now, Mr. McCaslin, you went back to the office and you now have the document, you’re gonna read into the testimony of the 38 major changes made to the Willis MB since the start of production. There’s been 250 to 300, but these are the major changes from your perspective and your teeth’s perspective.” It’s like, “Are you kidding me?” It’s like, “Who has this?”
[01:14:06:33 – 01:15:13:21]
It’s really invaluable information in terms of something to wanna see, the Jeep that won the war, how it evolved to be able to really function in any and all environments around the world, from sub-freezing temperatures to tropical heat. Just remarkable. Oh, it’s an amazing thing. And in that 3,500 pages that you were reading through, you haven’t found anything about the reverse alien technology. And the reason why Jeep is so good is because it was actually created by aliens. Well, the only problem with that is, Roswell didn’t happen in 1947. Well, that’s what they tell us. They couldn’t say anything until the aliens landed and then they would have copped to it, but it’s pretty amazing. So you were talking about how writing the book and how coming up with the book and your first book being really detailed and factual, and how do you make the book, not your words, but my words, more entertaining, or easier to stay involved in? And I can’t help but think that you’ve been asked a number of times, and I don’t know if you cover this in your book,
[01:15:14:23 – 01:16:08:35]
where did the name Jeep come from? That’s some basic things that is probably insulting to you because there’s so much more detail in here than where the word Jeep came from. But it’s that kind of stuff that people, they wonder about, because Jeep is kind of a strange name, or they call something. Right, and actually that’s a great question, okay? Right in the wheelhouse, because they spent a lot of time during deposing everyone on the court case, trying to figure out when the Jeep name was applied. Oh really? Interesting. The initial moniker for the vehicles was quarter ton four by four light, because it was only supposed to weigh 1,250 pounds. Right. And it was supposed to replace the motorcycle with sidecar and the mule.
[01:16:09:48 – 01:16:36:04]
And between that, the motorcycle and sidecar weighs about 500 pounds in a half ton truck. So I’ve talked about it before where they just came up with this figure, well, it’s gonna weigh 1,250 pounds without asking anybody. And that was a massive issue. Of course. Oh yeah. And the whole Jeep procurement. But what happened was, this is testimony that I read for this update that I hadn’t read before, because I saw these names and I’m like, who are these people?
[01:16:37:40 – 01:19:24:28]
They’re like nothing, they’re like not anybody. So I decided to read their testimony. They actually had these two people come in and testify that they were calling things Jeeps the year before the Jeep was begun, or before the Jeep whole quarter ton. What happened was they called a lot of things in that time period, vehicles Jeeps. It was just kind of like this generic term. So when the quarter ton started arriving in Holabird in the fall of 1940, they actually called them the Bantam, the Willis, the Ford, but they also said, hey, bring that Jeep out. Oh yeah, we knew what it was. And somehow it kind of evolved between October, 1940 into early 1941, where the term Jeep just was singularly applied to the quarter tons. It really wasn’t someone named it. That is fascinating, yeah. It really was someone didn’t name it. It was an evolution. And that’s what the court case came to decide. It was a major thing that decided because, hey, Willis is saying, hey, we created the Jeep. Well, how did the Jeep name get in? The court case basically came, we will never know exactly who called it a Jeep first because it was such a common term that they used, which is why they had that people testify. They were calling these other vehicles Jeeps because that was just this slang, generic term that people used. And so that was a major thing in the court case. It’s a really great question. There’s so much that I wanna just point out. One of the things my book does, and I am now calling it humbly, because I am a humble guy. Okay, maybe not that all that humble. It’s literally the magnum opus of the creation development of the Jeep now. The earlier version, which only went through March of 41, one of the reviewers on Amazon said, “No better account of the creation of the Jeep has been written.” And now that it goes through the entirety of the whole process right up to January, 1942 in detail, it’s no book has ever been written like this, the original Jeeps that covers the creation development of the Jeep and the historical accuracy using all this stuff from the court case, the people who actually did it, and all the documents from there and then everything else I found, which would supplemented that, ever done. And it stuns me, because I actually, I’m kinda like, who the heck am I to do this? No, I understand. I just had the perseverance just to keep going and I enjoy this stuff, I’m wired for it, so on and so forth. And so really, so that, so one of the things my book does is it dispels all, there’s so many myths out there in this early Jeep history period. But before you go into that, let me just make a connection here and see if you’ve already made this connection. So it amazes me about the Jeep name.
[01:19:25:46 – 01:19:43:28]
You know that people name their Jeeps things, but for them, they don’t actually name it. Somebody else has to name it. It’s like being given a nickname, your friends or enemies or whatever has to give you the nickname. So Jeep is actually a nickname of this critter that they built.
[01:19:45:03 – 01:19:47:27]
So Jeep, the Jeep name is actually a nickname.
[01:19:48:34 – 01:20:05:19]
(Laughs) It was doing the nickname thing before Jeeps were invented and before people were putting their nicknames on Jeeps. And I think that is so cool that the name is a nickname. I still don’t know where Jeep came from. I don’t know why anybody is in their right mind how you would come up with Jeep,
[01:20:06:21 – 01:21:27:11]
unless it was, if the timing is right, if it was Popeye and Eugene the Jeep to go anywhere, a little animal that would pop in and out of existence. But I think that that actually was happening after the Jeep was built. So it just sounds like a weird thing to say, call things a Jeep, but very, very interesting. I had no idea about that. Yeah, that’s a really good point actually, because it was a nickname. Now where the term Jeep came from in the 30s, I really have no idea. Then we hear it. And it was a generic term. And then it just got applied. Because again, the official moniker throughout the war, even up to today is, it’s the quarter, one quarter ton four by four light, which is really amazing because they never changed that title of it, even though the eventual weight they came for the vehicle was 2,165. Yeah, I was gonna say, it wasn’t anywhere close to the 1250. Yeah, I remember that. But I think they kept calling it the quarter ton throughout, even in the court case, throughout the war and beyond. It so was distinguished from half ton trucks and other half ton vehicles. Because they renamed it the half ton four by four light, which really isn’t all that light. It wouldn’t have made any sense. So the army just kept that quarter ton and never weighed a quarter ton, ever.
[01:21:28:17 – 01:22:01:08]
Now one of the brothers, so again, it’s one of those quirks of the whole thing that came in in terms of the procurement. I’ll just give you one other example. I was reading recently, well, how did Ford get their license? Someone’s reading online and it says, well, there was some chance meeting with Edsel Ford and all of a sudden they had a license. No, that’s not what happened. It’s right in the court case. The army was figuring after they’d given the 16,000 to Willis in early August, 1941,
[01:22:02:17 – 01:23:35:34]
by September, they’re going like, we’re gonna need a bigger boat. It’s like Jaws, okay? It’s like, we’re gonna need a lot more than 16,000 of these things, right? And so they’re looking around and they’re going like, well, how do we get a second supplier? So they reached out to Willis. Now I missed it in one of the documents. I said early October, it was actually October 3rd, 1941. In the documentation, Willis had the exact date they were contacted, I think it was by telephone. And they said, it was kind of the godfather. Yeah, we’re gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse. How would you like, what would it take to have a second supplier? And so Willis is like, probably didn’t wanna do it, but it’s like, well, we really need this contract. So they wrote a letter on October 10th saying, here’s what we need to have, to make sure we have a second supplier who would build our vehicle under license. It would be our exactly our vehicle. And I had that letter, I put it in the book. It’s like, gee, right? And then the quartermaster got ahold of that within two weeks, they’d let a contract for 15,000 of Ford underneath that letter. Because they wanted Ford on board. But that’s how it came about. The quartermaster was saying, we might need this. They reached out to Willis. Willis said what they would need. And the quartermaster took what they said and said, we’re gonna create a licensing agreement underneath this based upon what Willis said and give it to Ford. And Ford, this is where you get the GPW. Their experimental model was the GP. G was for government, P was for 80 inch wheelbase.
[01:23:36:48 – 01:25:10:15]
They named it the GPW, because it was then the GPW Willis. That’s how you got that name. And they built the Willis under license. And one of the things they wanted to make sure was there was exact standardization between the two throughout the war. And they testified how they did that. So I put that in the book. Here’s how they made sure the Willis MB and the Ford GPW were exact, the same exact model, just being built by two different manufacturers. That would be tough, because you gotta figure that different manufacturer wants to do something a little different, engineers and people that are doing things. But it would be important for them to be the same, especially when they’re out in the field and being worked on to get soldiers from point A to point B. So that’s pretty damn amazing. Yeah, right. And that’s a really good point. It’s really tough. And it was one of the major things that was the problem in World War I was lack of interchangeability of parts and standardization among all the vehicles they had over there in France was a nightmare. And all these people were in the now under 40s and 50s. They all remembered that. So they were fanatical about making sure things were standard. And they went through in the detail, going to your point of how difficult it was. Here’s everything we had to do on the Willis side and the Ford people testified. Here’s everything you had to do on the Ford side to make sure these stayed always in exactly the same model and nobody went in another different direction, like you say, because it’s just easy to do. Oh yeah. And the communication level they had to have. It may have been a great idea, but you can’t non-standardize it because it’s gonna screw something up.
[01:25:11:19 – 01:25:28:55]
Weren’t things, and you may not know this, but weren’t things in the 30s more handmade? I mean, it wasn’t Henry Ford that actually started with the replication of the same part over and over again and made the vehicles inexpensive. So I would have well imagined that World War I, a lot of stuff was handmade.
[01:25:30:10 – 01:26:42:11]
Well, again, to your audience, we did actually not set this question up. This is just happening. But that’s another great point. You say, “Faw, why is that? “Thanks for asking.” What happened was when everything was handmade in World War I, World War II, they had manufacturing, right? But for the prototypes, it was such a, and this is going back to the summer of 1940. So when Bantam was building their prototype, which ended up being the Bantam Reconnaissance Car, and Willis was building their prototype, which ended up being the Quad, okay? And then later on in the fall, when Ford built their prototype, the Pygmy, they were all handmade from scratch, handmade, the parts put in, everything. So going to your point, and that’s one of the things that points I’ve made in the book is in all three of the manufacturers, but especially Bantam and Willis, these were vastly experienced car people. And in that era from 1900 to 1940, the people that were involved in vehicles, it was a very much exactly to your point, hands on, even with all of it back in the day. They were artists, really? Yes, they were artists, they were mechanical geniuses.
[01:26:43:12 – 01:27:07:22]
And that comes out in the book. So in the original Jeeps and the detail in terms of the hands-on knowledge they had where they could actually build parts and then do the drawing after the parts were made. Oh, interesting, that’s cool. That sounds like the way I do things. That’s not how you’re supposed to do it, but when Bantam only had 49 days, they said, “Yeah, well, we’re gonna break all the rules.” And they did, so.
[01:27:08:24 – 01:27:13:33]
It amazes me that they developed something that was just so phenomenal.
[01:27:14:41 – 01:29:41:42]
And was this case to figure out who it was that came up with the best design, the one that really was the genius behind it, the manufacturer that was behind it? Well, again, what the book documents is the infantry’s testing in the late 30s where they were looking for a vehicle, they knew they had this mobility problem. And then they get to 1940 and they have no solutions. And then through this whole series of miraculous circumstances, Bantam gets married up with the infantry. They come out with the June 6 memo, okay? And this is all documented in the book in detail, saying, “Here’s the general idea of what we want.” And so then they went through and they got to later in June and it was basically, it’s a long story, it’s in the book, how they got to the Ordus department. The Ordus department said, “We have no idea how to procure a vehicle. How about we go up to Butler and talk to some people? Because we really have no clue beyond the general, very general characteristics in this June 6 memo.” Well, in one of the two most important days in Jeep history, June 19th to 20th, 1940, in Butler, they went up there and had a whole bunch of discussions between the Army and Butler team and Spicer-Axel team who had to create the Axel. And then after that conference, they had a better understanding of what was to happen. Now, let me give you an example from the court case. Now, most people will be able to say, “Well, they went to Butler and they had some discussions. And by the end of those two days, they had a basic idea of what they were gonna do.” No, not in the Magnum Opus. In the court case, the head of Bantam named Frank Fen detailed every single thing they did from the time they arrived in Butler, the Army, till they left on June 20th, including massive detail on everything that happened on June 19th, 1940, in terms of they came in, we went to the fairgrounds, we discussed this, Mr. Chris took them on a tour of the plant, I discussed this with this. And then this is the great, this is the stuff that just, you know, you bowls you over when you’re reading this. Then it said, “Now, there was a online, I saw this drawing that would say, well, we believe this is the drawing of, the first drawing of a Jeep like vehicle drawn in 1940, but we’re not sure where it was drawn and who drew it and why.
[01:29:42:59 – 01:31:13:11]
Dudes, that drawing is in the court case. And Frank Fen testified that at the end of the day, on June 19th, 1940, Mr. Beasley and Mr. Brown took a yellow scratch pad, like this person’s holding in their hand, he’s pointing in the courtroom. And drew a drawing of what they thought the vehicle would look like and be like. And so now you know who drew it, Mr. Brown and Mr. Beasley, when they drew it, drew 1940 at 5 p.m. and why they drew it, it was at the end of the day, in terms of coalescing all the ideas they’d had. Amazing. Yeah, amazing. And I’m like, why am I the only one that found this out? So me being me, because Humpel, remember that’s the theme of this. Mr. Humpel, we’re gonna call you Mr. Humpel. So I decided, well, since I have it, I will give it its own name. So I called it the Beasley Brown drawing. There you go. I never give it a name. So, because there are the two guys that drew it. Well, you gotta be able to reference it. I mean, and Jeep has already taken, so it makes perfect sense. Oh yes, thanks for working with my ego here. It’s gonna, Tony, I appreciate that. So other questions that are coming to your mind. So one of the questions I had, this is going back a while, but I didn’t wanna stop you. The documents and stuff that you’re using, drawings especially, is there any copyright issues that you had to go through on that? I don’t know a lot about copyright. There may be, it may be like the Disney thing where everybody can use Mickey Mouse now.
[01:31:14:27 – 01:32:22:57]
Because it has a statute of limitations type thing on it. Well, the good news, and that’s great, another great question. Actually, should I not have asked that question? I’m sorry. No, no, no, actually it’s really good news. Because I’m an American taxpayer, so are you, right? Yep. So anything that’s created by the government that’s been declassified is in the public domain. Gotcha. Because we paid for it. So all the documentation from the archives, including the Beasley Brown drawing, it’s public domain. Gotcha, okay. So I could use all the– I mean, it sounds like wonderful stuff to have in the book, but I’m thinking, oh, you had to be a little concerned about who might come back on you on that. But yeah, if it’s in the public domain, that actually absolutely makes sense. And I knew that, I double checked it. Federal government documents, every single thing. Now there’s other things I used in the book that I had to give credit for and stuff like that. I knew, but all the documentation, all the banner’s bid proposal, the drawing, Beasley Brown drawing, Willis documentation, all the stuff that’s in the court case, and any other documents I found outside of the court case at the National Archives.
[01:32:24:16 – 01:32:27:22]
All public documents that anyone can use for their purposes.
[01:32:28:22 – 01:32:48:42]
And even photographs, which if they’re created by the government, they’re also public domain. I like that, that’s good, it makes sense. It does make sense. So I got a question for you. You’ve already mentioned several things that were surprising and shocking that you found. I mean, just having the documentation was surprising and the level of detail and accuracy.
[01:32:49:42 – 01:33:42:13]
Was there anything that you were just blown away about reading in that document, the court document, the 3,500 pages, something that being a big history buff and jeep buff and you went, I did not realize that was that or that was there or anything come to mind. Don’t feel bad if you can’t think of anything, but. Oh, no, no, again, appreciate the question. I think there was a lot of those moments, like the June 19th moment I mentioned, they deposed, I didn’t mention this, on the Ford license, they actually deposed the lawyer for Willis who developed the whole license and explained it in detail. But one good one is I’m reading through and I didn’t know this and I didn’t see it out there anywhere near, again, another one of those aha moments that the Willis quad failed in the testing
[01:33:43:31 – 01:33:49:22]
and Willis was gonna be eliminated from the competition in January, 1941.
[01:33:50:22 – 01:33:57:06]
And the quarter master themselves wrote a memo that the second in command, a guy named Barzinski,
[01:33:58:09 – 01:34:59:48]
pleading with the chief of staff, which was George Marshall’s office, that we can’t allow this to happen. And I’m like, are you kidding me? The quarter master is running a letter on behalf of a vendor who their own committee is saying they shouldn’t continue to make sure they continue. There’s one of those like, what? Yeah, that seems fishy. Well, I understand why they did it, but it’s just so unusual going to your point, like what are you reading and going along? And it’s like, wow, that’s incredible that that happened. And the other thing that’s incredible, while I’m thinking about that, again, aha moments is I call Willis Oberlin the Phoenix of the Jeep, creation development of the Jeep. They were gonna be eliminated in July, 1940, when they didn’t get the first bid. And then they rise from the ashes to stay alive when the quarter master says, well, if you want to build, you know, experiment pilot models on your own expense, you could do that. So they did that.
[01:35:00:51 – 01:35:29:06]
So then they go and they’re almost eliminated in late January, 1941, early February, 1941, when the quad failed and they’re saved again through the bureaucracy where it’s like, well, no, you could stay, we’re just gonna approve your prototype, even though it didn’t pass all the testing. Really? Yeah. Was it because they needed as many Jeeps as they could get for the war? It was because they wanted to keep
[01:35:31:10 – 01:37:25:08]
the various interpretations of the vehicle going forward. So they had the Bantam interpretation and they were very similar in a lot of ways, but very different, okay? They had the Willis interpretation and they had the Ford interpretation. So they wanted this multi vendor approach as the vehicle evolved. So that’s why they went to bat so much for Willis. And it’s kind of understandable. And it was good they did because what happened was Willis went back to the drawing board and the weight got raised up to 2,160 pounds. They had put in a more powerful engine Oh yeah. Into the quad, which caused a massive weight problems. And in fact, the army recommended it’s in the book, in the technical committee report, you need to get rid of this engine. And then I have the testimony where Delmar Roo says, I had a meeting with Mr. Frazier and we discussed changing the engine. And we decided we were gonna plan our flag on this engine. We know it’s a great engine. We know it has more power, 60 horsepower to 40 horsepower. And I Delmar Rooz know that more horsepower in a military vehicle is never a bad thing. It’s never a bad thing. And so they were able to get the weight down in the Willis MA and the Willis MA, their experimental model proved to be a next level better because of that powerful engine, because then the Ford and the Banda, because they had used 40 horsepower engines to try to keep their weight down. So let’s move forward to the final aha moment for Willis, right? So the new edition of the book, this is brand new material, I’m reading along and it’s like, all right, they had a procurement for the 16,000, right? So they all put their bids in and what did the quarter master do? The quarter master wrote a four page memo, which I put in the book, called the technical analysis, basically saying Ford is God and Willis and Banda stink.
[01:37:26:13 – 01:38:23:22]
Therefore we’re gonna give all this to Ford. That’s the Paul Bruno short version, right? I mean, you read this memo and it’s like, really, I’ve been in bureaucracies, things happen, I’m an old man now, there’s decisions that are made and then you write stuff to justify the decision, right? They wanted to give this to Ford. So this whole memo, which I actually put the whole memo in the book, because it’s good for people to read this stuff, instead of me saying, hey, they wrote this memo, they can read for themselves and get the feel for what happened. Oh yeah, absolutely. So this is July 30th, 1941, the quarter master writes this memo saying, we want Ford, they literally go to the chief of staff and the director of purchasing to get approval to award to 16,000 contract to Ford, which means you would have only had a 40 horsepower engine, which means it wouldn’t have been as good a chief, it probably would have been fine as the Willis Jeep, okay?
[01:38:24:58 – 01:38:30:12]
It goes up the chain of command and one man, William Knudsen says, no.
[01:38:31:19 – 01:39:20:10]
Willis has the lowest price and maybe the best vehicle, but they had the lowest price and you’re supposed to award a contract based upon price, right? Right. I am ordering the quarter master to award this to Willis. So Willis again, arises from the ashes of the Phoenix for the third time and is awarded the 16,000 contract and that’s how you get the iconic Willis MB that everybody knows, but most people don’t know, they were that close to not getting that contract. They were gonna give it to them. And so it’s just so funny, people never change. The quarter master writes another memo to get the Willis thing approved and they were so mad. The memo basically says, Paul Bruno Parifres, well, because you overrode us and wouldn’t let us give this to Ford, here’s the approval for Willis, say yes.
[01:39:22:15 – 01:39:46:18]
It’s like, I don’t wanna say little children, but it was just like, they were so mad and that’s how you went to the Willis MB and then in the court case and the testimony said, well, all that detail, the machinations on the 16,000 and then I had the detail on Delmar Ruz, I talked about the changes during the war. Delmar Ruz talked 15 pages. I only put 10 in the book.
[01:39:47:26 – 01:41:05:48]
Here’s the changes between what we bid on for the 16,000, a drawing that the quarter master put out and the actual first vehicle we built. 15 pages, like 45 changes they had done just between when they awarded the contract to build the first MB. So I put 10 in the book to give people a flavor for it. Again, detail, never found anywhere else and it shows, I didn’t wanna put so much of it in, but at least the 10 or 12 examples I put in shows how the vehicle was still evolving even from when they were awarded the contract and there’s also testimony that I put in when they awarded the contract in 1941 of, hey, we had meetings, this is what we discussed, this is what we had to do. So again, just astonishing detail, why I humbly truly say it’s the magnum opus, I wrote the book deliberately using as much of the testimony as I can and then putting in connectors and other information to allow the people who did it to tell their own story. Yeah, that’s wonderful. It’s really just that wonderful. So I know we have people going, not that it wasn’t interesting to begin with, but all these revelations that you’ve outlined with us talking here.
[01:41:06:58 – 01:42:13:11]
What’s the name of that website again? It’s originaljeeps.com, save you from having to rewind, originaljeeps.com. And that’s really got some extra information, but if the books are available at Amazon, the original Jeeps, the original Jeeps and Pictures, which is the picture book, the images book I talked about that I wrote 2022, then the original book, which if I was people, I wrote it as a project management book, it’s a nice book on the first Jeep project management and history of the first Jeep. But if I was just the general person, I’d buy either the original, oh, this is the vision I wanted to say, thank you for letting me talk long enough so I can remember what that guy was gonna say. Regent Dapnack, yack, yack, yack, yack, yack. So if you want the story in the detail in words, order the original Jeeps. If you want the story in easy read and pictures to get a basic understanding of what happened, you can read an hour, which is why I wanted to make the story more accessible to people. So you buy the original Jeeps and Pictures and obviously you can buy them together.
[01:42:14:22 – 01:43:39:46]
They’re not expensive books, I’ll tell them right. The original Jeeps in 1999 and the original Jeeps and Pictures in 999. So we tried to make them– It’s more about getting the information out there than it is to become millionaires, I would assume. Yeah, for me, it really was a calling on my life, a quest to tell this story and the further I got into it, especially when I found the court case and for some odd reason, maybe the only person that went into it enough detail to realize what it was, what it is, that yeah, so that’s, so for me, I’m not in it for the money, never have been, it’s just really good. And thank God for individuals like yourself that brings this information to the light. I mean, if you were just looking at this and looking at it from a dollars and cents figure, you go, nobody’s gonna buy enough of these to make me enough money, but it was your passion to put this information together. And had you not had that passion, I’m sure you wouldn’t have run across that court case, which to me is just like a huge stroke of luck that they went through all this, if nothing else, because of the truthfulness of it. So let me ask you a quick question and I’m sure the main answer is wait, but was there ever any discussion about putting any assemblance of a roll bar on these Jeeps because the soldiers are out there and they’re not in pristine conditions. And I would imagine a few of them got injured with a Jeep flip flipping over.
[01:43:41:13 – 01:43:45:54]
As far as I know, at least through my, I’m only early Jeep history through 1942.
[01:43:46:56 – 01:44:15:06]
No, I didn’t see anything in the 38 major changes that talked about a roll bar. So, and I have read that that was a massive problem with the, you know, we’ll work two Jeeps rolling over. As far as I know, no, I guess they figured, well, We were men, we’re men and we die like men. That’s right. You know, so roll bar, who needs a stinking roll bar? Yeah. Come on. They would have called that a sissy bar.
[01:44:16:56 – 01:44:28:47]
Maybe, like I said, you know, and the other thing is, you know, maybe adding a roll bar would have changed the dynamics of the vehicle in a way that I really don’t know. Yeah. So the other question I have for you is, do you own a Jeep?
[01:44:29:49 – 01:44:51:40]
Everybody asks me that. And the truthful answer is I don’t. You don’t want one of the original Jeeps? I thought about it, but I don’t really have the space for it. If I was going to get a Jeep, I would buy either a GPW or a Willis MB, you know, that’s leftover from it. That was gonna be my next question with all the research you had done, which one would you want? Because I mean, all of them of course, but.
[01:44:52:56 – 01:45:00:58]
Well, there’s only, from my reading, and there’s only 23, they only built 1500 MAs and there’s only 23 of those left.
[01:45:01:58 – 01:45:50:15]
The Ford pygmy is actually in a museum in Hudsonville, Alabama. The third Jeep still exists. No, it is. And so, but the only Jeeps you could get, I don’t know if there’s any GPs left. So the ones you get are the, you know, they built 600,000 between the GPWs and the Willis MB. That’s the ones I would get because I’ve written so much about them if I hadn’t. I just like to say, well, you know, my, I’m wired. I’m not really the outdoorsy type person or have the Jeep for that reason. I’m more of the academic type, so I write about them. Right. That’s my role. No, you don’t have to own a Jeep. You don’t have to want to own a Jeep. I just think that after all the research and stuff, even if you weren’t taking it off road, it’d be cool just to have to cruise around, you know, drive through Wendy’s, get a Frosty, you know, that type of thing. I like Frosty’s actually. I have no idea how you knew that.
[01:45:51:18 – 01:46:04:26]
Everybody likes Frosty’s. That’s why the machines broken every time you go there. I probably should buy one to just put it in the garage so I could say, yes, I own a Jeep. Exactly. You’re ready for that question. Or you could just lie. This isn’t a court case. You could just lie and say, yeah. (Laughing)
[01:46:05:27 – 01:46:37:27]
No, I’m gonna lie. It’s gotta be something bigger than that. You know, I gotta get some real money out of it. If you’re gonna lie, I’m gonna sell your soul. I gotta sell it just so I own a Jeep. And I think people are okay with that because my contribution to the Jeep world is really, and that’s why I specify early Jeep history, 1940 to January 1942, or really end of World War I to January. I stop after, you know, once you get to the war. Though in the new book in chapters 13 and 14, as we were going through the denouement of,
[01:46:38:49 – 01:47:44:43]
excuse me, of the Jeep development, creation development, we did an homage to the Jeep starting in chapter 13 in 1941, and we have photographs of the Jeep from 1941 to 1945 in chronological order. So people can see the Jeep and the war while they’re going through how they got the 16,000 and how the Willis MB came about, and then obviously the Ford license. So that was fun to do that to kind of pay out, you know, honor or homage to the Jeep at the end of the book. Here is all this work and effort and detail that these individuals had gone through, and this was the payoff. It was used everywhere. All right, folks, so originaljeeps.com, we mentioned that you can go to Amazon. I make it really easy for you. You could just do a search for Paul Bruno, and several books actually come up. Some of them are about Jeeps, and there’s the original Jeeps and pictures that Paul mentioned, the original Jeeps, which is the, I believe, the first book that you wrote, and let’s see, do I see the most current one? Yes, the most current one out there.
[01:47:45:59 – 01:47:48:39]
Well, actually the first Jeep, that was the project management one.
[01:47:49:45 – 01:47:52:12]
Yeah, the project management was the first book.
[01:47:53:13 – 01:48:35:48]
The current book, if you want soup to nuts on the creation development of Jeeps is now what we call the expanded edition of the original Jeeps, which is on Amazon. And then if you want the accessible version of the story, and, you know, picture tells a thousand words, the original Jeeps and pictures. And like I said earlier, if I was someone I’d buy, if you want the detail, get the original Jeeps. If you want just the overview, get the picture book. If you want the whole story, both words and pictures, buy both. Yeah, I was gonna say, if you get the one, then you’re gonna have to stop what you’re doing and order the other one. So just get the picture one and then get the other one as well. Get all three, and then you have plenty of things to do whenever the EMP hits and all the power’s out.
[01:48:36:57 – 01:48:38:18]
(Laughing) That’s kind of true.
[01:48:40:05 – 01:48:51:52]
Paul, thank you a lot for being here today. Tell the kids where they can find you on social media. We’ve got the original Jeeps website, originaljeeps.com. Are you on the Instagram? Are you on the Pinterest, the picture things?
[01:48:53:00 – 01:49:56:35]
The only one we have is we have a Facebook page, the original Jeeps that people can go out and check out. And I keep that up to date. I’ve been going through a weekly post for over two years now, posting each page of the original Jeeps out on the original Jeeps of pictures out on the original Jeeps Facebook page. Oh, that’s neat. So lots of really cool pictures there that people can read through the particular posts. And I still have seven or eight, six or seven chapters to go through. So that keeps the Facebook page fresh. So for people to check out as I do those weekly posts. So now I know there’s some keyboard warriors out there that think they know everything about the early Jeeps. So now you can go over there and pick fights with Paul on the Facebook page and he can show you where you’re wrong. Well, I wouldn’t say we would have a civilized discussion. Yeah, a friendly thing, a friendly game. I say people have tremendous passion for the Jeep and the early Jeeps. And as people know stuff that I don’t know,
[01:49:57:38 – 01:50:06:27]
in fact, truth in advertising, we’re doing an update to the original Jeeps and pictures. And
[01:50:06:27 – 01:50:46:17]
detail that it didn’t hurt that it wasn’t in there but adding it to the update will be nice. So people have lots of good information that they can choose. Book’s still really great now. And I’m not sure exactly when we get the updates but don’t hesitate to buy the original Jeeps and pictures. It’s just going to your point. People have so much knowledge out there, but I can definitely just also miss. These are not expensive books. So don’t worry about trying to save a nickel. Take the latest information. Well, that’ll be $200, it’s 30 bucks all in if you went for both books, plus shipping.
[01:50:47:26 – 01:51:14:04]
Great job, Paul. And you really covered a lot of stuff. I appreciate it. You made the interviewer position here really, really easy. And I appreciate that. Paul, thank you so much for being with us here today. And whenever you uncover some, the next thing you should research is Roswell. There was Jeeps involved in Roswell. We spoke about that earlier. Now you just need to go a whole other direction. Maybe you can find some court documents that won’t get you killed. Well, we’ll start an urban legend that
[01:51:15:16 – 01:51:30:54]
the Jeep was designed by aliens because it was that great. So it was a step ahead. Nobody else seems to be able to make anything as good. We’re going with the alien theme on the Jeep Talk Show today. So there you go. All right, man, thanks so much. Thank you for having me.
[01:51:30:54 – 01:51:33:41]
Broadcasting Sense 2010
[01:51:33:41 – 01:51:41:09]
