Those Post-War Willys Sportsters

Before World War I, Willys-Overland was one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world; in the years after the war, it continued to climb the ranks, reaching as high as number two in sales (though it remained far behind number one Ford) and making its president, John N. Willys, a wealthy man. In 1928, the firm set a sales record for independents that would stand for 30 years.

But nothing in the world is permanent. Willys had built on a less than ideal foundation, buying various component firms and parts suppliers with borrowed money, as well as purchasing quite a few non-automotive properties and real estate. When the Great Depression hit, Willys-Overland found itself in trouble. Although the company managed to emerge from bankruptcy when the Depression ended, it was only a pale shadow of its former self.

By the time World War II broke out, Willys-Overland was a marginal producer of small, economical family cars that, unfortunately, not enough families wanted, and the company was just about broke. John Willys had died some years earlier, and new owners were trying to guide the company to prosperity. The company's fortunes had turned over only a few short years, and it lost its earlier status as an independent powerhouse.

However, as bad as things looked, in 1941, Willys was beginning to struggle back from the brink. Because of the impressive power and strength of its model MA Army reconnaissance car--nowadays, we call it a Jeep--Willys won contracts to build hundreds of thousands of vehicles for the U.S. Army. During the war years, profits earned from those contracts helped Willys to rebuild itself financially and re-equip its factories so that, when the war ended, they could get back to building cars. Cars were never far from the firm's consciousness: During the war, the company began to design an all-new Willys car with the idea of introducing it as soon as the shooting stopped.

Beginning in 1945, Willys offered civilian Jeep models, starting with the Jeep CJ-2. In 1946, the company unveiled its new Jeep station wagon, the first all-steel family wagon, followed by Jeep pickups and panel trucks. Presented to a transportation-starved public, the Jeep line couldn't help but be successful and the company was comfortably profitable as a result.

But there was big money to be made selling passenger automobiles, and Willys' management hungered to get back to building regular cars. The company hired industrial designer Brooks Stevens to design an all-new automobile similar in concept to its pre-war cars: light, simple in design and cheap to build. But there were no suppliers willing to build bodies for it, and there was no body tooling available for purchase.

By 1948, Willys chairman Ward Canaday could wait no longer. Since Willys couldn't build a modern successor to the old Americar, they decided to build a car they knew they could produce using much of the same tooling as the station wagon. Surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a "sports-type" car, originally conceived by Brooks Stevens to appeal to young people looking for something snazzier than a traditional convertible.

Introduced in 1948, the new sports phaeton was called the Jeepster. It was a tremendously good-looking automobile, sporty and fun to drive. As things turned out, the new Jeepster would prove to be just one of several attempts by Willys to produce a sports machine for the public.

What we've gathered for you here is a collection of photographs of the various sports roadsters (and sports cars) that Willys considered over the years. Some of these were only concept cars, some made it into production, and some were destined to never get beyond the sketch stage. The range of years for these cars--1944-'64--indicates that the men in charge of Willys maintained a consistent, continuing interest in producing sport roadsters.

First up is the 1948 Willys Jeepster, one of the more reasonably priced collectible convertibles out there. Except, of course, it's not, technically speaking, a convertible. It's a phaeton, which Webster's defines as "...an open automobile with front and back seats and a folding top, usually furnished with side curtains." That description fit the Jeepster to a T. Riding on a 104-inch wheelbase, the Jeepster came equipped with the same "Go-Devil" four-cylinder engine used in wartime Jeeps.

Willys called the new Jeepster, "An exciting new sports phaeton... a distinctly personal car." Drummed into the heads of Willys salesmen was this idea: "The Jeepster is a different type of vehicle--a sports car designed and built to provide the public with the utmost in performance, with unsurpassed economy."

Over the years, a few people have taken issue with the Jeepster being considered a sports car, but a 1948 Willys brochure did use that term, stating, "This dashing sports car is truly different... with the crisp clean lines of smart continental styling." In the context of 1948, the Jeepster was the closest thing to a sports car offered by an American manufacturer.

As it turned out, though, Americans didn't really want a sports phaeton all that much, so Jeepster sales were dismal. Fewer than 20,000 were produced over four model years. However, somewhere along the way, the Aluminum Company of America, or Alcoa, became interested in the Jeepster, betting it could improve the Jeepster's salability by producing a sporty coupe body for it. Alcoa produced the vehicle as a concept for Willys to consider. As one can see by the photos, the Jeepster coupe is quite handsome, with a wraparound rear window similar to those seen on Studebaker's famous "Which way is it going?" Starlight coupe. Apparently, Willys didn't think the Jeepster coupe had enough potential, because it never made it into production.

We've been told that Dick Teague, who later worked at Packard and served as AMC's vice president for styling, created the coupe design for Alcoa, but thus far we've been unable to find anyone who can verify this. Is there anyone out there who knows more about it?

The "sports-type car" dreamed up by Brooks Stevens was not his only contribution to the Willys lineup; he designed an Aero sedan for the sizable Brazilian market, for which Willys was actively producing unique models in those days.

But Stevens was not limited to designing Willys vehicles for Brazilian consumption: In the early 1960s, he came up with a few more ideas for a Willys sports car. One was for an inexpensive sport roadster based on the Jeep DJ-3 model. The DJ-3 was a two-wheel-drive version of the CJ-3A, with a low, flat hood, flat-top fenders and the veteran Go-Devil engine. Over the years, Willys had sold several variations of the DJs as light delivery cars; they were marketed as being ideal for pharmacies (for you youngsters out there, during the 1960s, most pharmacies were in business to sell medicine, and they usually offered free delivery!). What Stevens now proposed was a DJ-3 with enough changes to turn it into a low-priced sports car.

Called the Sportif, it featured steel doors with plastic side curtains, a shortened body with a stylish door opening line, and a continental mounted spare wheel with an extended rear bumper. Naturally, it was impossible to hide its Jeep parentage, but Stevens added a sporty side stripe, along with a new fastback soft top that made it look more like a sports car and less like a delivery truck.

Another idea from Stevens was for an updated Jeepster for the Brazilian market: A concept vehicle was produced that was about the size and shape of the original Jeepster. Stevens had earlier been hired by the Brazilian producer of Jeep vehicles to do a low-cost facelift of the Jeep station wagons and trucks. He created a whole new look up front that greatly modernized their appearance. For the new Jeepster, he proposed using the new-style front end along with smoother, more refined body styling. Called the Saci, it was a very handsome vehicle, but Willys Brazil decided against putting it into production.

By that time, Willys' own in-house styling team was beginning to exert greater influence on the way Willys vehicles would look. Styling chief Jim Angers wanted to do a sports car and had his stylist create some proposals. What he came up with was an immensely appealing sports car that bore no name other than a small "Kaiser" on the low-mounted grille bar. Although the photo isn't dated, the use of Kaiser rather than Willys indicates it was done sometime after mid-1963, when the Willys name was dropped. The wheelcovers look similar to those used on the 1963 Wagoneer, so it's probably from right around that era. We sure wish the company had built it!

That was it for Jeep sports cars for a while. By the time the next one appeared--the fabulous XJ-001 that debuted in 1970--Kaiser had sold Jeep to American Motors.