JEEP WILLY

JEEP WILLY

Main article: Jeep § Origin of the name
One account of the origin of the term "jeep" begins when the prototypes were being proven at military bases. The term "jeep" was used by Army mechanics for any untried or untested vehicles.[11]


"Jeep" was also used for several types of heavier equipment. In the armor branch, "jeep" generally referred to a 1/2 or 3/4 ton truck, with the 1/4 ton called a "peep." The militarized Minneapolis-Moline tractor was known as a "jeep," named for the cartoon character. Finally, heavy equipment transporters -gooseneck lowbed trucks for oversize, overweight cargoes, were known as "jeeps" by 1940.


Although folk etymology claims it due to slurring of an unused acronym, "GP" for "General Purpose", a more likely part of the jeep name came from the fact that the vehicle made quite an impression on soldiers at the time, so much so that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a character in the Popeye comic strip and cartoons created by E. C. Segar as early as mid-March 1936. Eugene the Jeep was Popeye's "jungle pet" and was "small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems".


In early 1941, Willys-Overland staged a press event in Washington, D.C., having the car demonstrate its prowess by driving up the Capitol steps. Irving "Red" Hausmann, a test driver on the Willys development team who had accompanied the car for its testing at Camp Holabird, had heard soldiers there referring to it as a jeep. He was enlisted to go to the event and give a demonstration ride to a group of dignitaries, including Katherine Hillyer, a reporter for the Washington Daily News. When asked by the reporter, Hausmann said "it's a Jeep". Hillyer's article appeared in the newspaper on February 20, 1941, with a photo showing a jeep going up the Capitol steps and a caption including the term "jeep". This is believed to be the most likely cause of the term being fixed in public awareness. Even though Hausmann did not create or invent the word "Jeep", he very well could be the one most responsible for its first news media usage.