The Rubicon Trail in the Sierra Nevadas is often described as the worst 12-mile stretch of road on the planet. To call it a road is a bit wishful, since even horses and mountain bikers have been known to balk at the rock-strewn mountain pass just outside Georgetown, California. The Rubicon is both Mecca and Medina to serious off-roaders. Hundreds go there every year to test their skills and their rigs against the Rubicon. Countless groups hold 4X4 driving camps here, including the U.S. Army.
Critics are fond of pointing out that only one in 10 SUV owners actually takes his vehicle off road, and this is true. But that misses the point, as far as that 10 percent is concerned. Those who can't tolerate the recent growth in popularity and upscaling of SUVs might be surprised to learn that people have had the sport utility impulse for a lot longer than SUVs have existed. Just 10 years after the first Jeeps were built during World War II, a chapter of civilian 4X4 enthusiasts was chartered by a Rotary Club in California. Their purpose? To coax their decommissioned Jeeps over the Rubicon. This summer, the 50th annual Jeepers Jamboree will take place there.
It is cause for concern or celebration, depending on your perspective, that just about every SUV today is built to serious off-road specifications. Except for the most recent trend toward car-SUV hybrids (such as the Toyota RAV, the Subaru Forester, and the Honda CRV -- cars that are referred to by industry folks as CUVs, "crossover utility vehicles"), these vehicles are built with special low-speed gearing and lock-out differentials, high clearance, roll bars, and all the other apparatus of genuine four-wheeling. Even the august Mercedes M Class, the ridiculous Toyota FJ80 Land Cruiser, and the odious Lexus RX 300 are as capable in the mountains as they are in the suburbs. While the interiors often are designed by people with their minds in the boardroom, the engineers who design the drive trains are thinking about high water, turning radius, and exit angle. The Rubicon is frequently occupied by major automobile manufacturers who are developing new models. It's not uncommon to see executives and engineers helicopter prototypes down to the trail, where a test driver puts the new vehicle through its paces. Like military vehicles, SUVs not only have to look the part, they have to act the part -- a rare case, perhaps, of hyperactive truth in advertising.
In recent years, the military pedigree of the SUV has become explicit. At last year's spring auto show in New York City, The New York Times reported, most automakers were displaying vehicles that looked less like sedans and limos, and more like tanks. Cadillac recently announced that it will be offering a fully armored model with bulletproof windows and steel plating. The privatization of the U.S. Army's "Humvee" -- now known as the GM Hummer -- also represents a reversion to origins. And if bigger is better, then brace yourself for the best: DaimlerChrysler has announced plans to roll out the world's largest SUV, a German military vehicle repurposed for the civilian market. The Unimog weighs five tons, stands 12 feet tall and seven feet wide, and will cost around $150,000.
There's ample evidence that these massive trucks are a form of escapism. But what, after all, is wrong with escapism? From one point of view, all of post-industrial capitalism is a form of escapism, a bulwark against harsh realities the rest of the world still faces on a daily basis. Pre-packaged chicken, herbal shampoo, ESPN Sports Center -- our more conspicuous forms of consumerism have always been as much about putting to use the opportunities of our privileged lives as about gaining any useful leverage against true adversaries such as time, space, and the income tax. Of course, the more radical our dreams get, the more they begin to look like our nightmares. Weren't the Taliban most easily identified from the air by their fully loaded Toyota 4Runners? In the isolated comfort of our luxury SUVs, we see the afterimage -- or perhaps the harbinger -- of war.
If War Is Hell, You'll Want Four-Wheel Drive
War has been very good to us. Not necessarily morally, of course. And not even economically. But automotively, there's little doubt that armed conflict has led to dozens of industrial innovations that have eventually trickled down to middle-class Americans -- even if these innovations are as specious, supposedly, as the SUV.
In a small shrine in the foothills of El Dorado National Forest rests what may be the SUV's fossilized archetype. At a homespun private museum in Placerville, California, the oldest existing military Jeep rests in its own split-cedar carport. Dating from 1941, it's the older of two surviving prototypes built by the Willys Overland company. And lest there be any mistake that this is an off-roading museum, rather than a military museum, the curator is most proud of the fact that the oldest surviving Jeep has participated in two Jeepers Jamborees.
The original Jeep, of course, is not technically an SUV at all. In many interesting ways, it's the antithesis of the contemporary sport utility vehicle. And yet it is the first passenger vehicle designed with four-wheel drive -- and this essentially fits the definition of the SUV. (Definitions of the SUV differ so radically that the only common factor seems to be four-wheel drive. Many pickups, of course, also are equipped with four-wheel drive. One might easily argue that pickup trucks, which predate SUVs, represent the same things spiritually, emotionally, and socially that late-model SUVs represent.)
While there were four-wheel-drive vehicles that predated the military Jeep, they were mostly highly specialized trucks and pickups. Many of these vehicles were developed during World War I, which was the first broadly mechanized war. But most military vehicles were either massive two-wheel-drive trucks, track-driven tanks, or motorcycles. When the French used Parisian taxi cabs to rush soldiers to the German front in 1914, military officials realized that light and fast passenger cars might be useful to military campaigns -- as long as there were passable roads between here and there.
As war smoldered in Europe in the late 1930s, American military officials began to prepare for the inevitable. In updating the military's fleet, they saw a gaping hole: There were no smaller passenger vehicles capable of light reconnaissance and general-purpose transportation, i.e., moving information, people, and equipment quickly and efficiently. There were heavy, two-ton personnel carriers, motorcycles with sidecars, and ceremonial sedans. But there were no small cars that could handle off-road conditions. In World War I, the mule had actually filled this role. (In fact, early prototypes of the Jeep were sometimes nicknamed "mules.") In the 1920s and '30s, pickup trucks were fitted with four-wheel drive and tested, but it was thought that their profile was too high on the battlefield, and they were too heavy. No single vehicle existed that was adequate for the job.
So in the summer of 1940, a group of officials from the Quartermaster Corps and the U.S. Infantry drew up a list of specifications for their ideal scouting vehicle. First, they wanted an automobile that weighed less than 1,200 pounds, a car that could conceivably be lifted by three or four men, thus making it easy to transport around the globe without support vehicles. Second, the car had to have plenty of power. They wanted it to be able to pull at least half its own weight -- the better to tow trailer-mounted artillery such as the 37-millimeter anti-tank gun. Powerful but light and able to handle off-road duty, the proposed car would need four-wheel drive and a wheelbase under 80 inches. Even with these rigorous field requirements, the Army also wanted the car to be capable of driving at least 50 miles per hour on pavement. On July 2, 1941, this seemingly impossible list of specs was distributed to every American auto manufacturer. It was an open invitation for bids to design and build such a vehicle. Any takers were given 90 days to build a prototype from scratch.
Only two companies responded with bids: Willys Overland and a small Pennsylvania car company called American Bantam. The only two companies that took an interest in this new vehicle had been building small, unprestigious passenger cars for the civilian market. American Bantam was the failing remains of a company that had been established to manufacture a domestic version of the Austin, a lightweight economy car from Great Britain. Willys Overland was building stripped-down commercial trucks and vans. Already during the '30s, American cars generally sported V-6 and V-8 engines; both Bantam and Willys were throwbacks, barely holding on with dependable but unglamorous four-cylinder engines favored by niche markets.
Only American Bantam came through with a serious bid and a prototype. Willys drew up a weight-and-cost bid but couldn't meet the 90-day deadline. Bantam, on the other hand, was a company on the brink of insolvency -- a successful government contract could give it new life. It hired a designer named Karl Probst, who went to work designing the new vehicle. Within 10 days, Probst had more or less drafted the Jeep as we know it today. While the Army's list of specs was highly defined, it was Probst who really put a face on the new car, still meeting all of the performance requirements laid out in the solicitation -- except for the weight restriction, which turned out to be impossible. The Jeep was designed as a boxy vehicle to minimize the need for complicated sheet metal drawing and braking. It was supposed to be no more difficult to put together than a refrigerator -- an antique aesthetic that has improbably survived into the 21st century.
By the end of September 1941, Probst's design was approved, and the Army processed an order for 4,500 vehicles. Willys and the Ford Motor Company were asked to share in the manufacturing because Bantam was too small an operation. The automobile was already being called a "general purpose" vehicle. Predictably the military abbreviated this to G.P., which presumably was foreshortened in speech to Jeep. There are other theories about how the car got its name. For example, E.C. Segar's Thimble Theater comic strip in the 1930s featured a character named Eugene the Jeep (and one called Popeye). Earlier tractors and earthmoving vehicles were occasionally referred to as jeeps.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.13.10 @ 2:04AM|#
mujc