Veterans Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Alabama.Īs this vehicle took on the name jeep (the origin of the moniker is highly debated), it also took on a life of its own, and today it has been called the grandfather of all SUVs. Miraculously, the first jeep that Ford constructed-GP No.1 Pygmy-still exists it’s on display at the U.S. Because the vehicles by both had to use interchangeable parts, they were very similar. The first two went on to make some 660,000 “blitz buggies”-Willys built 376,397 and Ford, 282,352. Three companies built prototypes: Willys-Overland, Ford and Bantam. The vehicle had to conquer all kinds of terrain, and it had to be able to carry a 625-pound load. In 1940, the Army asked car companies to come up with a design for a lightweight (2,175 pounds or less), four-wheel-drive vehicle that could be mass-produced and essentially take the place of what horses had been in warfare for centuries. The Jeep: 'As faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule' armed services into the greatest military machine in history.” As Arthur Herman wrote in his book Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, by the war’s end, Knudsen had gone from the president of GM to “the man who had built the U.S. Knudsen went on to become a lieutenant general in the Army, the first and only civilian American to receive this honor, and those Detroit auto men became heroes in the battle of the assembly lines. “The first half of 1941 is crucial,” Knudsen told a gathering of the most powerful Motor City executives. Soon after, at the New York Auto Show, Knudsen gave a keynote speech that lit the flame of industrial Detroit. So Knudsen gave up one of the most well compensated jobs in the nation to take on a government position at a salary of $1. William Knudsen was president of General Motors-the largest corporation in history-in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt charged him with heading up all military production in the U.S. Knudsen traded his high-paying auto-executive job for a $1 government salary to help lead Detroit's war-production effort. Roosevelt at the White House for the first meeting about the new National Defense Advisory Commission. William Knudsen, president of General Motors, meeting with President Franklin D.
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