The Cherokee nickel and dimed us and we ended up trading it for a new Nissan Pathfinder (sorry about that Toledo), but in 1995 we bought a new Jeep Wrangler Rio Grande and later I traded the Pathfinder for a used 1995 Grand Cherokee Limited. So except for 140,000 miles that I helped log on the Nissan Pathfinder, almost all my driving miles were done in a Jeep. The whole time I had the Pathfinder I missed driving a Jeep even though the Pathfinder was an excellent rig and I might still have it were it not for cheap Jap steel and piss poor rust proofing by Ziebart. What ever you do, don't waste your money on that, you are better off to let it rust naturally than pay the outrageous cost of Ziebart and still have it rust.

You're not going to find any monster mudding radical Jeeps
on this page, just your basic street Jeeps, the daily driver,
work Jeeps, Army Jeeps and a few Jeep oddities I've spotted and was lucky enough to get a picture of. The Jeep graphics (click on them) on this page, I've redrawn from old signs, patches and advertisements.

One of the best things to happen to Jeep in my opinion was to be purchased by Chrysler, there has been a marked improvement in the quality of the vehicle as well as the service.

*Note this page is not associated with Chrysler in any way. Jeep is a registered trademark of Diamler-Chrysler.

This is one of the many Jeeps at the Mid Atlantic Air Force Museum's WWII Days air show that takes place every June in Reading Pennsylvania. No wonder our boys fought so hard in WWII with girls like these for their inspiration.

Above are some of the many Jeeps seen at Reading's Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's WWII Days. The place is a buzz of activity with planes landing and taking off, re-enactment units, classic cars, trucks and motorcycles and, of course, plenty of old Jeeps.

I'm not going to try to give a history lesson about Jeeps. I think everybody already knows how they won the war. Some Germans even thought every G.I. had one.

One point I would like to make is that Bantam Motors of Butler, Pennsylvania, built the first real Jeep. The original design, however, was copied or stolen by other automakers and the contract was awarded to Willys. I guess it was best that Willys got the contract since It's not likely that Bantam would have been able to build enough Jeeps to supply the war effort. Willys couldn't supply enough Jeeps for the war effort, so other companies built Jeeps too, including Ford. The clean little WWII Jeep above is a Ford GPW, which is Ford's copy of the Willys MB jeep. The Jeeps of WWII are a far different animal than the CD-playing, mag-wheeled sports utilities that we have today. But no matter what year the Jeep, it's still a Jeep and all Jeeps are cool! If you ever need to know anything about old Jeeps, checkout Brian's Military Jeeps of WWII

Speaking of cool, there is nothing a Jeep likes more than wallowing in a mud hole on a hot day. Unfortunately, that wasn't my plans when this happened on a summer day in 1982. My best friend Bob, his brother-in-law Tom, Tom's nephew and I were out four wheeling in my 1978 CJ-7 to a place in the Allegheny National Forest that the locals call "Porky Rocks", but it's official name is Minister Lookout Point and is part of the Minister Trail. We were being followed by Tom's sister and her boyfriend in a brand new Dodge Power Wagon Pick-up. You could only go by 4WD so far and then you would have to hike the rest of the way to the "Rocks" on foot. Most of the trail was narrow and relatively tame, but at one point there was a mud hole and a decision had to be made as to which way to go. I should have taken the easy way like the Dodge PU that was following us did, but... 3/4 of the way through the mud hole, the distributor got wet and that was it, the big old 304 V8 was dead in the water. Since it wasn't my idea to take this route, it was my friend Tom's ("Ahh come on Donald, go for it"). Tom is the guy in the mud hole to hook up the chain. Once I took a few pictures of the situation and Tom hooked up the tow chain to the Power Wagon, I got the 7 restarted and away we went, well sort of...
One important note, don't ever trust the cute little tow hooks on the front of a Dodge Power Wagon, you might just get a tow chain slapped accross your hood along with the cute tow hook too! Ouch!!!

Somebody claimed you could see several states and Canada from this point, but I don't know. All I know is that it was a beautiful and inspiring view that was well worth the trip. From what I understand the trail may only be open to hikers now.

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ONLY IN A JEEP!

Everybody who has ever owned a few Jeeps has a favorite one. Mine was a 1965 CJ-5 Tuxedo Park Mk 4. I bought it used from my cousin's boyfriend. It was an odd little Jeep with chrome hinges and hood hold downs and Tuxedo Park emblems on the side of the hood. It had a column 3 speed shifter that was real tricky to master and would jam at the most inopportune times, but it had a factory bench seat that was cool, a hard top and Kelly self-locking hubs. On the down side was, of course, the column shifter and while the little OHV 4 cyl. engine ran great most of the time, it had a tendancy to blow head gaskets between the two middle cylinders and when you loose compression on a 4 cylinder, you are not going anywhere fast. Did I mention the vacuum wipers or the heater fan? They were no fun either and when you consider that you can almost fry eggs with the Wrangler's heater, I had some cold times in the that little Jeep, but one thing for sure, this little Jeep always got me home.

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Shane, Brigid & Rio
(Special thanks to Tommy C. AKA: "Chaos" for giving our wrangler it's cool name.)
Copyright 2004 Don Henderson

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As always, a special thanks to BCBA

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Don Henderson - Illustration

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Just in case you want a cool computer to go with your cool Jeep.

This and all my web pages are done on a Mac
Best if viewed in Netscape.

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