Four-wheel-drive fantasies: a defense of the SUV

Reason, July, 2002 by Hans Eisenbeis

While there were four-wheel-drive vehicles that predated the military jeep, they were mostly highly specialized trucks and pickups. Many of these vehicles were developed during World War I, which was the first broadly mechanized war. But most military vehicles were either massive two-wheel-drive trucks, track-driven tanks, or motorcycles. When the French used Parisian taxi cabs to rush soldiers to the German front in 1914, military officials realized that light and fast passenger cars might be useful to military campaigns--as long as there were passable roads between here and there.

As war smoldered in Europe in the late 1930s, American military officials began to prepare for the inevitable. In updating the military's fleet, they saw a gaping hole: There were no smaller passenger vehicles capable of light reconnaissance and general-purpose transportation, i.e., moving information, people, and equipment quickly and efficiently. There were heavy, two-ton personnel carriers, motorcycles with sidecars, and ceremonial sedans. But there were no small cars that could handle off-road conditions. In World War I, the mule had actually filled this role. (In fact, early prototypes of the Jeep were sometimes nicknamed "mules.") In the 1920s and '30s, pickup trucks were fitted with four-wheel drive and tested, but it was thought that their profile was too high on the battlefield, and they were too heavy. No single vehicle existed that was adequate for the job.

So in the summer of 1940, a group of officials from the Quartermaster Corps and the U.S. Infantry drew up a list of specifications for their ideal scouting vehicle. First, they wanted an automobile that weighed less than 1,200 pounds, a car that could conceivably be lifted by three or four men, thus making it easy to transport around the globe without support vehicles. Second, the car had to have plenty of power. They wanted it to be able to pull at least half its own weight--the better to tow trailer-mounted artillery such as the 37-millimeter anti-tank gun. Powerful but light and able to handle off-road duty, the proposed car would need four-wheel drive and a wheelbase under 80 inches. Even with these rigorous field requirements, the Army also wanted the car to be capable of driving at least 50 miles per hour on pavement. On July 2, 1941, this seemingly impossible list of specs was distributed to every American auto manufacturer. It was an open invitation for bids to design and build such a vehicle. Any tak ers were given 90 days to build a prototype from scratch.

Only two companies responded with bids: Willys Overland and a small Pennsylvania car company called American Bantam. The only two companies that took an interest in this new vehicle had been building small, unprestigious passenger cars for the civilian market. American Bantam was the failing remains of a company that had been established to manufacture a domestic version of the Austin, a lightweight economy car from Great Britain. Willys Overland was building stripped-down commercial trucks and vans. Already during the '30s, American cars generally sported V-6 and V-8 engines; both Bantam and Willys were throwbacks, barely holding on with dependable but unglamorous four-cylinder engines favored by niche markets.