Author: Barry

A note appeared on the CJ2a forum, including a link to a video about the life of John Willys, the rescuer of Overland and the founder of Willys-Overland. The creator of the video declared that Willys should always be pronounced “Willis.” The old argument resurfaced. Is it “Willis” or is it “Willies,” as 99% of the general public says?

Barry, in need of some video editing practice, has put together a very short (one minute, sixteen seconds to be exact) presentation on the subject. Using four films from the time frame of 1946 to 1954, he pasted together four short clips where the narrator or actor says the word “Willys.” Watch it on YouTube and turn on closed caption.

In two of the movies, both pronunciations are used. We guess that Willys’ executives didn’t care how you said it, as long as you were buying a Jeep!

Is it an April Fool’s Day Joke?

We came across this picture in a 2016 post on an antique tractor forum. The poster said his father (pictured) worked for the Ford Tractor & Implement Division (T&I) after returning from the war in 1945. He was a “tester” until his retirement in 1970. The picture appeared a few times in Facebook posts in late 2024. We have not been able to contact the author.

Some posts have been removed, but while they were up, we were able to capture this and other Ford tractor photos. The caption for this photo said “Testing Willys Jeep with a Woods box blade.”

We are working with Ford archivists. They don’t have this picture in their archives. It is possible someone in the T&I Division took it. Note the negative number in the lower left corner.

We will continue our search, but we hope someone out there might have more information. But the mere fact that a Ford tractor tester is driving a CJ2a with a Newgren lift is certainly intriguing.

FJ

In early 2023, we posted a piece about a chat with an AI bot. This early dip into the AI revolution wasn’t rewarding for us. We have experimented with using the early models to edit articles. For one article, Barry had the model create a title that was better than his original. It generated five and one was the clear winner. However, the early models didn’t look promising as a research tool.

Recently, as more AI models have become available to the general public, we have explored using them for research and analysis. Models can analyze material, including web pages and videos. We submitted our site for analysis and are using the results to improve readability.

We submitted our Home page and asked the model to improve it. The process took only seconds, and our only task was to recreate links. We suspect that will be automated in newer versions. Did it work? We believe so. But we will have to wait for some HI (human intelligence) feedback to know for sure. Hit the button above and let us know what you think.

Analyzing videos

From our first viewing of the Monroe/Newgren film Revolution in Pleasantville, we praised it as an excellent example of a very early infomercial. However, we needed a marketing professional to explore this aspect of the film, and that was not in the budget. Recently, the ability to analyze YouTube content was announced, and we jumped at the chance.

We submitted the movie to an early version of Goggle’s Gemini.

Movie Analysis by AI – Revolution in Pleasantville

Research

We were researching snow plows when we found an interesting fact about early FC trucks. The early trucks used the CJ5 frame and could, therefore, have a Newgren or Stratton lift mounted under the bed. Barry was using simple search terms, examining each hit for relevance. The FC find was irrelevant, but it led him down another productive path. Would an AI search have produced the same results? Maybe

We are learning that using AI isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. AI research needs to be guided through effective prompts. For example, if we had prompted the model to find Jeep snow plow documents, it would not have returned any information about the FC. We would need to construct a more complex query. That ability isn’t available to us right now.

We will continue to use AI to improve the site and our writing but will wait a little longer to make it our research assistant. Stay tuned.

Snow plowing and the Willys Jeep seemed like natural fits. The picture above is from an ad promoting the use of nickel to strengthen steel. The ad didn’t get us thinking about nickel, but it sure did make us think about the Jeep and snow plowing.

You can read about the ad and snow plows here.

We hope your new year is filled with joy and happiness and Farm Jeep fun.

eWillys.com is part of our Farm Jeep family. These pages contain dozens of links to eWillys posts and articles. You can read about Dave Eilers here. When Dave announced that eWillys would be shutting down, we were, of course, saddened. eWillys has been a part of our morning coffee routine for years. The same was true for thousands of others. The time was right for Dave to move on and we know he will continue to contribute to Willys and Farm Jeep history. This is not a goodbye, just cheers to Dave and Ann for a new beginning.

Tim Driscoll was one of those eWillys fans, and Tim has taken over the reins from Dave. What a gift to all of us that eWillys continues! The first post of the new year from Tim featured a Monroe lift. And in the tradition of Dave and eWillys, it contained a nugget of information we haven’t seen before. What a way to start a new year.

Welcome to the Farm Jeep family, Tim!

Barry & Evan

As this picture shows, Santa was an early adopter of the jeep. Once again, we would like to share the history of Santa’s Jeep. Enjoy!

Barry & Evan

Besides Charles Sorensen, no other individual is more important to the Farm Jeep story than Robert Green. In 1945, Green worked with Sorensen and Jabez Love to introduce the first hydraulic implement lift for the civilian Jeep. Green co-founded the Newgren Company in 1946. He would continue working at Newgren, even after its purchase by Monroe Auto Equipment Company. In 1951, Green returned to work at Willys, becoming the head of the Farm Sales Department in 1952. He left Willys in 1955 but continued producing Farm Jeep implements at his manufacturing company.

We have created a timeline for Robert Green. We think you will enjoy reading about the life of this engineer who helped shape the Farm Jeep – Robert H Green Timeline.

We have been busy with fall chores around the farm. But there are a few Farm Jeep items to report and all of them fun.

We will start with our new Newgren 16″ plow. You can read about the latest addition to our plow collection and how it found us here.

More Love

Our friend Daryl Dempsey has added a couple of more Love Tractors to his herd. And a Wish Basket! Read the story here.

Where to put that size 18 in a 2a?

Bill Norris was again called to perform homecoming duty—this time with an oversized load. Read the solution here.

An FC down on the farm (show)

Seth posted on the CJ2a forum about his adventures at his first tractor show. For us it was the first time seeing an FC doing farm work. What fun! Read about it here.

The show season has come to an end. It has been a busy year, with bad weather and vacation conflicts, causing us to miss some of our favorite events. But this year’s Elnora show was something special. Read all about it here.

September is always a time of change. Summer is still hanging on and there are a couple of season-ending shows to attend. It has been a tough summer, Somethings just didn’t work out as planned and we were pushing ourselves and others to go faster to make up ground. Things got done, but it wasn’t fun. And fun is what the Farm Jeep experience is suppose to be about. So we are shifting gears.

Jammers

Sometimes you need an external signal or a nudge to let you know that a change is in order. Pictured above is one of the tour buses in operation at Glacier National Park. While visiting Glacier this summer, Barry became fascinated with the Red Buses. The history of these machines will make you smile. This was pure fun. Drivers were known as “Jammers” because they could be heard “jamming” gears as they tried to shift the transmission. But along the way, changes were made that improved the performance of the buses and made shifting gears and driving easier. It got him thinking,,,

We seem to have been jamming gears this summer. So we are stepping back and seeing how we can get back to having fun. The Jeep Spotters and Lift Registry projects have gone nowhere. We will work on those. We also will going to halt some research projects. We are learning to accept that somethings will never be known. While we won’t close them, we are going to report are findings and move on. To something fun.

How to shift gears

In the next few months, we are going to explore how Willys – and Monroe, for a they were a big part of it – went about selling the Farm Jeep. A key factor was the farm demonstration. It was so important that Robert Green of Newgren fame wrote a book about how to conduct a demonstration. Monroe would make the farm demonstration a key feature of their 1949 marketing campaign “Revolution in Farming.”

Willys would devote an entire section of its “Product Merchandising Manual” to “Demonstrations.” It even includes instructions on how to shift gears. You can check it out “Techniques of Shifting.” Just scroll down to page 11 of the manual.

Stay tuned!

For the first time, my latest article for Farm Collector will be a web-only publication. You can read it at – https://www.farmcollector.com/tractors/jabez-love-innovations-zw0z2408zbro/

The article is a summation of the extensive research we have conducted on Love. You can read the entire story at https://www.farmjeep.com/lifts/love-lift/love-lift-history/jabez-love/

Barry