The origins of the car : the 1st jeeps Bantam BRC forty Dashboard of WWII time jeep.

Jeep with 50 cal. Browning machine gunWhen it became obvious that the U. S. was finally
going to be involved in the war raging in Europe, the U.S. Armed forces approached 135
companies asking for working prototypes of a four-wheel-drive reconnaissance Jeeps For Sale vehicle. Only two companies replied to the request, The North American Bantam Automobile Company and Willys-Overland. The regiment had set what looked like a most unlikely cut off point of 49 days to supply a working prototype. Willys asked for more time but were refused. The b
ankrupt American Bantam Vehicle Company had no engineering staff left on the payroll and brought in Karl Probst, a proficient
freelance designer from Detroit. After turning down a preliminary request from Bantam, Probst accepted the job after being asked again by the
division, and initially working without income, went to work July seventeen, 1940. Probst totally laid out plans for the Bantam prototype in 2 days, and the following day estimated the final cost of the vehicle. On July twenty-two, Bantam’s bid was submitted, complete along with blueprints[4] Much of the car needed to be assembled from existing off-the-shelf automotive parts, and the custom four-wheel drivetrain
components were supplied by Spicer. The hand-built prototype was finished in Servant, Pennsylvania,[5] and driven to Camp Holabird,
Maryland, for testing by the division on 21 Sep 1940. The vehicle met the Army’s standards,
but its engine did not meet the Army’s torque necessities.
The regiment felt that the Bantam company was too small to supply the number of cars it required, so it supplied
the Bantam design to Willys and Ford who were encouraged to make their own changes and modifications. The ensuing Ford ‘Pygmy ‘ and Willys
‘Quad ‘ prototypes looked similar to the Bantam BRC ( Bantam Reconnaissance Automobile ) prototype and Spicer supplied
terribly similar four-wheel drivetrain elements to all 3 makers. 1,500 of each of the 3 models built and at length field-tested. Willys-Overland’s chief engineer Delmar “Barney” Roos made design changes to meet a revised weight blueprint ( a maximum of 1,275 lb ( 578 kg ) [6] including oil and water ). He was therefore able to use the dynamic but comparatively heavy Willys “Go Demon” engine, and win the initial production contract. The Willys version of the vehicle would become the standardised jeep design, delegated the model MB and was built at their plant in Toledo, Ohio. The familiar pushed metal Jeep grille was actually a Ford design feature and incorporated into the final design by the army.

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