1953 m38a1 cdn

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

It might be useful to see if the CFR Number system for 1/4-tons continued into the M151 fleet and if the numbers look like they might have continued in sequence. If so, perhaps, before the M151's became available in quantity, the Canadian military discovered they were short 1/4-tons in their fleet for whatever reason. As a stop gap until M151 numbers increased, they bought from the USA, or elsewhere, a block of the cheapest 1/4-tons they could quickly get their hands on to equip as needed for a short period of time. This could explain a bunch of very early vehicles being on record with unusually high CFR Numbers. Also, I recall militarized CJ5's being in the Canadian vehicle mix at one point. Why i do not know, but did they also bear the CFR Numbers and how sequential were they to the list?

Interesting to read about the militarised CJ-5's in Canadian service. I suspect they were bought from Willys / Kaiser, rather than through the US military procurement system like the M151. Countries like Holland, Israel and Switserland used militarised civilian jeeps, and I suspect there were many more "civilian" jeeps used by the military than we suspect. Since the jeep was a military vehicle by design, the civilian and military specs are not far off from each other so it is difficult to recognise a militarised civilian jeep among mil-spec jeeps anyway

H.