For Oppo Embiggen Days I thought I might try to rush together a post, or perhaps three posts if I could find enough material, about my “holy trinity” of Jeep: Karl Probst, Barney Roos, and Brooks Stevens.
As it turns out, Probst, while important, probably wasn’t the primary creator of the Bantam prototype, and now I’m questioning my purpose in life.
Source: https://wmspear.com/Bantam/jeepinvent.html
And doing justice to Roos would involve more clue about engines than I possess at the moment.
So, here’s a Hemmings post about Roos to enjoy, although it doesn’t dive into the Go-Devil, so here’s a Hemmings post about that legendary engine.
Tangent: it’s interesting how much overlap there was between Studebaker and Willys in key talent. At least, Roos and Stevens worked for both automakers, and I’d wager they weren’t alone.
Tangent, the second: check out this wicked-cool Willys advertisement in a 1943 Life magazine. Thanks, Google.
In fact, that whole issue is worth browsing. Quite the rabbit hole.
And a rather sobering ad for State Farm involving a careless driver or perhaps just old-tech brakes.
I also considered extending my Jeep grille series, but the Cambrian explosion of FSJ grilles means that next post will be a doozy, so that won’t happen overnight.
So, I’ll probably miss this edition of Embiggen Days, but if you’d like to read more about Jeeps, I have no shortage of posts that I’ll humbly submit as worthy of having been embiggened at the time.
- Jeep Experience series
- History of Jeep trucks
- And because this piece still ranks as the worst views per minute spent writing it (110 views so far), a road trip retrospective