Monday, July 18, 2011

70 Years of Jeep - What Came After WW2? The CJ2A!

In our 70th Anniversary series of articles we have been concentrating on the original WW2 Willys and Ford Jeeps in action in the Pacific with Australian and Allied forces, but what happened as the war ended?
Well as the war was ending during 1945 Willys started production of the Civilian Jeep (CJ) version of the trusty military Jeep,.the CJ2A.Production started July 17, 1945 with the CJ2A sharing production with the MB. Production on the MB continues on through September 1945 with roughly 9000 being produced. Since the CJ2A used many MB parts---they looked very much like a civilianized MB with a column shift, larger headlights, tailgate and side mounted spare tire!


Few people realise that the CJ2A had two civilian ancestors:  The CJ-1 and the CJ-2.  By 1944, the Allies were confident the war would be won.  This allowed Willys to consider designing a Jeep for the post-war civilian market.  Documentation is hard to come by, but it seems that a CJ-1 (for "Civilian Jeep-1") was running by May of that year.  The CJ-1 was apparently an MB that had been modified by adding a tailgate, drawbar, and a civilian-style canvas top.  None of the CJ-1s built have survived, and it is not known how many were built.
The CJ-2s, also known as "AgriJeeps", were a further evolution of the design and appeared sometime in 1944 or 1945.    They had tailgates, Power Take-offs ("PTO"s), engine governors, column-shift T90 transmissions, 5.38 gears, 2.43:1 low-range transfer cases, and driver's-side tool indentations.  The earlier models had brass plaques on the bonnet and windscreen that read "JEEP".  Later models were stamped "JEEP" a la the familiar "WILLYS" stamping that appeared on the CJ-2A and later models.  Some CJ-2s had "AgriJeep" plaques affixed to the dash.  The spare tyre was mounted forward of the passenger-side rear wheel on the earlier models and aft of the rear wheel on later ones. It seems that CJ-2s were distributed to "agricultural stations" for evaluation purposes. 214,760 Willys CJ2As were produced between 1945 and 1949. 
source http://www.thecj2apage.com/

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