Four 1960’s Popular Mechanics Ads

In honor of the end of winter, the beginning of spring and the rapidly coming summer, today we have four ads from Popular Mechanics magazine from the late 60’s celebrating the seasons. Kaiser had acquired Jeep a little more than a decade ago, but before AMC acquired the jeep in 1970 a few important changes and options had shown up in the stable.

The Dauntless V-6 225 had brought an important boost of horsepower in 1966, the Jeepster Commando showed up in 1967 and in 1969 Kaiser offered the jeep camper option in 1969. It featured a four person accommodation with all of the amenities that you’d expect while ‘roughing’ it! The jeep offered a little bit of everything for the public to enjoy no matter the season.

Click here to view the full albums of jeep ads grouped by model.

This will be the last regular update for a couple of weeks as I will be out of town on vacation. I will still be posting on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, so check them out. But look for more in May! I have alot more to scan and more areas of the website to revamp. Stick with me, the best is yet to come at This-Old-Jeep.com!

CJ-5 and Scrambler Desktop Wallpapers

For today’s entry I decided to bookend two seasons since we are in spring and are pretty much still square in the middle of things. Here in Maine spring has been famous for being a time of split results weather-wise. It is just as likely to snow as it is to rain, as likely to be 50 degrees as 20 and this spring has been a pretty typical one.

The two photos above span from 1971 to 1982. The first photo features the Renegade II package from 1971. It was the first new trim dress up package for the new acquisition by AMC and featured body striping, a roll bar and tachometer, but freezing model in a mini-dress was not included as standard equipment.

The next photo is of the venerable but short lived CJ-8 Scrambler from 1982 the second year of production in its short life.

As always you can click here for the press photo album. Thanks to DesktopMachine.com for the free downloads. You can also find other classic press photos as well new model and test prototypes. Check them out and I bet you’ll change your desktop background today!

With this entry I’ll have to keep you hanging for a little bit. There won’t be anything new for a while as I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks until the beginning of May. When I get back I plan on continuing revamping the website with a new look and functionality. Thanks again for everyone’s patience as I think that it will take me the greater part of this year to finish. We’ll have lots more great jeep photos, ads, brochures coming soon this year too. I have more press photos, a large Jeep Cavalcade ‘project’ that I think you’ll enjoy and another large project that I have envisioned as a jeep family tree. Still rounding up items and info for it but I plan on unveiling it this year. I also have ideas for more items in the Zazzle This-Old-Jeep.com store including iPhone and iPad covers! Keep checking back in and I promise that there will be plenty to see this year!

The This-Old-Jeep.com 2011 Calendar- April

Happy April Fool’s Day everyone! And since it is April and the season for practical jokes the April page of the 2011 This-Old-Jeep.com calendar features a couple of the lighter sides of living with the jeep.

“Monkey Business” was taken by a GI who just couldn’t resist the temptation to goof around with his buddies and the jeep outside of the Supply depot for the 53rd Station hospital. At least that is if I’m reading the sign correctly. I’m sure that this wasn’t the first time that these guys tried something like this to try to get their CO to buy a sick leave story.

The remaining photo is of a sign hanging from a tree that shows the danger of hitting a crater in the road while driving along in your jeep. Along with having no seat belts driving in a small open topped jeep, made it no joke if you hit a shell hole in the road. It could lead at the very least to a good bounce (and maybe as the picture shows, out of the jeep) and sometimes worse than that. The very thin padding in an MB’s seat was the main cause of complaint for no small number of GI’s who quite literally thought that this was a pain in the butt. I can’t remember the name that it was given by the Army but it was christened something like ‘jeepitus’ or the jeep complaint. But knowing GIs it was probably something a bit saltier than that.

The background of the calendar page though, is perhaps the best practical joke of them all!

You can click here to view the full album of calendar pages. Or you can simply order the calendar for yourself through the This-Old-Jeep.com store which is available through Zazzle, one of the largest online custom product marketplaces. You can also find the individual photos in the These Old Jeep Photos album of MB photos.