Where did Jeep get its name?

SlickRoenick · August 31, 2005, 1:31am

Except for the theories on this website halfway down, are they are more sound origins?

Morbo · August 31, 2005, 1:37am

I’m not saying I know for certain what the origin of jeep is, but I’m pretty sure I know what it ain’t–namely, an elision of GP. (For one thing, the jeep wasn’t general purpose–it was designed for reconnaissance.) What we now call a jeep was actually the last of several vehicles to bear that nickname. By one account, the name jeep originally was used by motor pool mechanics in World War I to refer to any new vehicle received for testing. It was also applied derisively to the more hapless recruits. Be that as it may, the term was little known outside the military until March 16, 1936, when a character called Eugene the Jeep was introduced in Elzie Segar’s popular Thimble Theater comic strip, home of Popeye. Eugene was a doglike critter who subsisted on orchids and had the ability to travel between dimensions and solve complex problems. The Jeep tickled the public’s fancy and his name was soon applied to a host of things, including an oil exploration vehicle, a prototype of the B-17 bomber, a military tractor, a type of truck, and so on.

Finally, in 1940, the military commissioned the manufacture of a four-wheel-drive scout car. A test driver for Willys-Overland, one of the makers of the new vehicle, drove one up the steps of the U.S. Capitol as a publicity stunt in early 1941. When asked by a reporter what the vehicle was called, the driver, Irving “Red” Haussman, said it was a jeep. The press popularized the term, and within a short time jeep-as-funny-looking-four-by-four had supplanted all other uses of the name. Just so you know, a version of the jeep made by Ford did have the letters “GP” in its designation. But the G stood for “government” and the P was a code indicating an 80-inch wheelbase, not general purpose. In any case the name “jeep” had been around long before, and its origin had nothing to do with “GP.”

Colibri · August 31, 2005, 2:00am

Eugene the Jeep

Jeep! Jeep!

Colibri · August 31, 2005, 2:08am

A more detailed history of the Jeep

Johnny_L.A · August 31, 2005, 4:59pm

The CJ2A Page used to be my website. I’ve been overwhelmed by other things (as you may know from some of my posts over the past eight or ten months) so I turned it over to someone else. Anyway, there’s a lot of good information about the CJ2A jeep and links to other Jeep sites.