JP’s A to Z Challenge – U is for Universal Jeep

U was proving to be one of those problem letters. I did not have a photo of a Chevrolet Uplander or a Buick Park Avenue Ultra. But I do have photos of two vehicles whose manufacturers specifically described them as Universal. One is the Ford Model T, which Ford called “The Universal Car”, but that would have been a stretch because “Universal” was not part of the car’s actual name. Not so with the other, which is this early Jeep. Did you know that three successive corporate owners of the Jeep brand called this model the Universal Jeep (and later the Jeep Universal)?

This Willys Universal Jeep CJ-2a is among the very earliest of a long line of civilian Jeeps that goes right up to the present. But I can hear it now – “Hey, this isn’t a civilian Jeep, but a military version.” Well, that was what I thought when I wrote it up at Curbside Classic as the original military Jeep, called the MB.

However, after I wrote that piece, some people more knowledgeable about old Jeeps than I am called me out and corrected me. This, they said, is a CJ (for Civilian Jeep) 2a. This came after the CJ-1 (of which a very few were built in 1944), and the CJ-2 (about 40 built as test vehicles). This makes the CJ-2a the first version of Jeep sold at retail to the general public instead of to your Uncle Sam.

If you are curious, the clues that this is a CJ-2a and not a military MB are the fuel filler in the side panel and a separate tailgate panel, both of which are apparent in this unit and which were not in the original military configuration.

Jeep advertising immediately began calling this model the Universal (Capital U) ‘Jeep’ (with single quotation marks) – most likely because the company could not get a trademark on the Jeep name until 1950. The Universal name continued to be officially used through the later CJ-3, 4 and 5 models by Willys-Overland (1945-53), Kaiser Jeep (1953-70) and American Motors (1970+), although some time in the 1950’s it went from “Universal Jeep” to “Jeep Universal”.

Page from the 1948 Willys Jeep sales brochure, found at oldcarbrochures.com, which uses the “Universal ‘Jeep'” term instead of its model name, CJ-2a, which has become common usage in the decades since .

The Universal was distinguished from Jeep trucks, Jeepsters, Station Wagons/Wagoneers and other models, which the company also made during those years. It was only in the 1970’s when Jeep dropped the “Universal” name and began calling its flagship model the Jeep CJ.

The owner of this one was an elderly patient of my doctor, who had been invited out to see it and give it a spin. My doctor knows my old car fetish and asked if I wanted to go along. It was a great time and I even got to drive it! The owner had this one (which he identified as a 1948 model) restored in Navy livery to match his era of Naval service, and it apparently sports some reproduction military MB trim pieces (like the 9-slot grille) to give it that military Jeep look. And in fairness to the owner, while he called it a military Jeep, he did not call it an MB – I made that mistake all by myself when trying to research it.

From the start, there was nothing else like the Universal Jeep. It was rugged and simple like the Ford Model T of a generation before, but the Jeep added more power and 4 wheel drive to get its driver into (and out of) almost any kind of geography.

I love that Jeeps are still being made in Toledo, Ohio some 80 years after the first Universal CJ-2a rolled off the line in that city, but I am here to tell you that the modern Jeep Wrangler is a far cry from this grizzled old veteran. Only one of them is a vehicle I would want to drive as everyday transportation – and it is not this one. However, if I was to be marooned on a deserted jungle island and given the choice of a vehicle to be left for my use, a Universal Jeep like this would be hard to beat.

Photos by the author northeast of Indianapolis, Indiana, October 18, 2016. This Jeep was previously featured at CurbsideClassic.com.

17 thoughts on “JP’s A to Z Challenge – U is for Universal Jeep”

  1. I always thought that Jeep would have been well served to keep producing a vehicle this small and stripped down (and probably cheap), as well as the suburban Karen land yachts they became, not to mention their checkered repair record (so bad, it was one of the only vehicles that I used to hear the Car Guys on NPR openly ridicule). A good friend of mine ended up in Viet Nam as the escort to a chaplain, and was responsible for driving and maintaining an early era jeep like this. He always said they were incredibly easy to work on, and he would repack wheel bearings and redo brakes with ease. He also said that the military jeeps had a very thin side-to-side stance, and could actually tip over pretty easily, a “dirty little secret” and people were hurt all the time rolling them.

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    • I think that tall/narrow problem was the reason the Wrangler (the most direct descendant of this one, finally got so big and wide.

      There is also the complexity thing. Everyone says they want something cheap and simple. But then you add all the mandatory safety and emission stuff. Then everyone wants air conditioning, automatic transmissions, power steering, heated seats and the rest. And here we are.

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      • I remember that 60 Minutes did a segment in the early 1980s on the propensity of the Jeep CJs to roll over. The story didn’t gain much traction because these Jeeps weren’t – as yet – being widely used as a subsitute for passenger cars.

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      • I recall that it eventually came out that it took several tries to get one to tip over, but they didn’t let that stand in the way of good TV!

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      • The real “tip over champ” was the Suzuki Samurai, so easy to knock over (in fact, four people could probably pick it up). I hadn’t seen one in years, and now, weirdly enough, there are Asian and Hispanic kids restoring them and blasting around my town in “packs”. I didn’t know it was a “thing”, but now I’ve seen 10 or so of them fully restored with custom paint jobs!

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  2. I find it interesting the advert for the UJ promotes “plowing” (farm work, not snow), and mobile power. Not exactly features you think about with the average motor vehicle. For those reasons it certainly deserved to include “Universal” in the name.

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  3. It’s quite a contrast to see this Jeep, and then see the modern-day Wranglers now being used as family vehicles. Whenever I attend a school sporting event for one of my daughters, there are at least two or three Wranglers in the parking lot. My older daughter, who begins driving in November, wants a Wrangler…as do her friends! I have no desire for one.

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  4. Was the trademark problem due to Eugene the Jeep from the Popeye comic strip? I also seem to remember “Jeep” being from the initials GP for General Purpose. Another winner in your series, to be sure.

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    • I have always understood that the official view was, at first, that the name had bubbled up into common usage and that Willys was trying to grab the name for itself. But I think it became apparent after awhile that this vehicle and the Jeep name had become linked by the whole world.

      And thanks!

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  5. It sure is rugged looking and those big tires and body raised so high up tells you it would go through water without a hitch as well. I remember being with my father once, a family outing to a large shoreline park and someone had an amphibious vehicle and was driving it right into the water while everyone stood in awe. My father said he had worked on a prototype for a similar one and was all excited about seeing it.

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    • You probably saw something called an Amphicar. They were made in the early 60s and they still have a cult following, even though they were not particularly good either as a boat or as a car.

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      • I Googled Amphicar and yes this was likely what we saw as it looked like a real car. That’s interesting that it wasn’t particularly good as a boat or a car. I guess more of a novelty then. When we lived in Canada, a neighbor was a meteorologist and always had what we kids thought was “cool stuff”, from his tanks of Piranhas that he would feed hamburger to delighting us kids and then there was his Isetta, which he would take us neighborhood kids for rides around Oakville.

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