(Australian) ARN listing

[Mike K]

Originally Posted by Douglas Greville

Mike

That was a nice cosy arrangement for the big end of town.....

Yes it was !

The Willys MBs were mostly bought by the pre-war Willys dealerships i.e. Stokoe Motors in Melbourne or Dominion Motors in QLD. Carpenter Co. is one often seen buyer of jeeps in the ARN books. Who or what was Carpenter Co. ? Pre-war, Willys didn't have a large central assembly factory in Australia like Ford or GM-H did, it appears the pre-war Willys sales were handled by smaller individual firms. GM-H were making Willys car bodies but they were not distributing Willys products.

Getting back to disposals: Did these Willys dealerships/buyers (or Ford) send their representatives out to pick out the best jeeps or were they allocated individual jeeps by the CDC ? Who decided what the fate of the individual jeeps was ?

The description of jeeps is interesting: 'TOURER' is one seen.

There was a long list of jeep recipients: Some jeeps went to the NEI forces, some were transferred to the RAN during the war . What became of those ?

This Australian newspaper advert is dated August 1942 which is quite early, Dominion motors ( Sydney branch ) were looking ahead at Willys jeep sales post war.