Ever since the early days of World War II, people have posed for photographs in front of Jeeps. This particular picture found by Keith Ross apparently shows Russian soldiers posing in Afghanistan in the 1980's, but unfortunately we have no other details. How the 3B ended up there is unknown, but it's not all that surprising, since Jeeps seem to find themselves almost anywhere where the going is tough.
Decades and worlds away, at the 1954 Chicago Auto Show: a female model sits behind the wheel of a CJ-3B equipped with a snowplow on the front and an early Jeep-A-Trench trencher on the rear. Lee Maguire found this photo on the Chicago Auto Show website, and comments, "So in '54 they were still pushing hard on the industrial and farm sales pitch."
More glamorous cars on display at the 1954 Chicago show included the 1955 Thunderbird, Cadillac La Espada concept car, Studebaker Commander Starliner and Nash Metropolitan convertible. Also the 1954 Kaiser-Darrin convertible (right), the last new car to carry Henry Kaiser's name, before he decided to concentrate on building Jeeps.
The Kaiser display at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland concentrated on practicality. An interesting detail is the presence of chaff screens on the front of both the CJ-3B and the diesel CJ-5 on display. The photo is found in Bill Munro's book Jeep: From Bantam to Wrangler.
This unique photo is courtesy of the Archives Center of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. It shows U.N. peacekeeping soldiers training in Jeep repair and maintenance, specifically on the Hurricane engine, at the Willys-Overland plant in Toledo in the 1950's. The image is taken from Reel 6 of the Industry on Parade Film Collection, 1950-1960. Industry on Parade was a documentary television series created by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) which included some 500 episodes from 1950-1960.
Here's a lineup of CJ-3B's from probably the late 1950's, and I'm guessing this photo was possibly taken in Puerto Rico. Does anybody recognize the location? The photo was published in the Willys promotional booklet Jeep Vehicles in Public Service, as an example of Jeeps being used in public health work.
I'm also guessing that after the first six or so Jeeps in the lineup, the rest are the product of one of Willys' busy photo-retouchers.
Thanks to Luis Mariano Paz, Lee Maguire, Keith Ross and Bill Munro. -- Derek Redmond
Return to the Index of Unusual Photos on The CJ3B Page.
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