The success of the jeep inspired both an entire category of recreational 4WDs and SUVs, making "four-wheel drive" a household term, and numerous incarnations of military light utility vehicles.

[5] The idea of the jeep originated with the infantry, which needed a low-profile, powerful vehicle with four-wheel drive and it was turned over to commercial companies (chiefly Bantam, Willys, and Ford) to deliver—the development repeatedly being described as a "design by committee.

"[36] Some 70 years later, in a late 2012 article, the Defense Acquisition Research Journal[nb 15] still called the jeep design "...a product of a massive team effort, including all three manufacturers as well as Army engineers, both military and civilian.

The motorcycles of the era were not ideal; only the best motorcyclists could endure a muddy battlefield trail, control the bike and keep it from stalling, damage, or flipping over; and driver training was both costly in terms of time and money.

The most suitable truck capacity found by the Quartermaster General for Army use to be 11⁄2‑ton, matching both the country roads nature, the strength of bridges, as well as the existing troop supply system, at the time also using standard 11⁄2‑ton, four-mule wagons.

More than five years before, Henry Ford had launched his Model T. "... Its speed, durability, stamina, and ease of maintenance (compared to a horse) had already won over many civilians,"[49] and British and French forces also wanted them.

[49] Britain, France, and Russia were already buying American-made four-wheel-drive trucks from the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, and Jeffery/Nash Quads, because on the muddy roads and European battlefields, they would not get stuck all the time.

In 1919 already, the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps recommended the acquisition of a new kind of military vehicle, "... of light weight and compact size, with a low silhouette and high ground clearance, and possess the ability to carry weapons and men over all sorts of rough terrain."

During the first half of the interwar period, the Roaring Twenties, despite a booming economy, United States non-interventionism and neutrality policies were supported by both elite and popular opinion, to the point of isolationism, and no real budgets were allocated.

By the end of World War I, U.S. forces overseas had a total of 216 different makes and models of motor vehicles to operate, both foreign and domestic, and no good supply system to keep them running.

[5] The committee included the now major Robert Howie, invited for his expertise, having actually built an ultra-light prototype infantry-support vehicle, officers representing the Quartermaster Corps, and the Army's using arms:[68] Infantry, Cavalry, and the two Coastguard divisions, as well as civilian engineers, mainly from Camp Holabird and Bantam.

To begin with, the committee sent an Army delegation including Howie, and Camp Holabird vehicle testing engineers, to Butler, Pennsylvania, to visit American Bantam's factory, being invited to an extensive demonstration there, to evaluate their compact cars and production facilities.

"[7] As the War Department deemed American Bantam to not have the production capacity or financial resources to deliver on the scale the Army would need, the other two bidders, Ford and Willys, were encouraged to complete their own pilot models for testing.

While Bantam's prototype underwent testing at Camp Holabird from 27 September to 16 October, Ford and Willys' technical representatives were invited and given ample opportunity to observe the vehicle and study its performance.

[nb 22] Bantam's original no.01 first remained at Holabird for incessant shake-down and breaking point testing, and ad-hoc fixes and improvements of weaknesses, while by November 1940, Ford and Willys also submitted their first prototypes to compete in the Army's trials.

For 1941, Bantam's got called the "BRC 40"[nb 25] Production began on 31 March 1941, with a total of 2,605 built up to 6 December – the number ordered was raised because Britain and the USSR already wanted more of them supplied under Lend-Lease.

[97] After the initial design specification of a maximum 1,275 lb (578 kg) weight had been raised to almost double that in production, to achieve the necessary ruggedness on the main 1⁄4‑ton, the Army still wanted a truly lightweight model for airborne missions and use in the jungles of the Pacific theaters.

Willys managed to reduce the weight on their 'MB-L' (MB Lightweight) to some 1,570 lb (710 kg) in 1943; and Army engineers were impressed by the Chevrolet and its advanced features: a single center spar frame, and an integrated gearbox and transfer case.

Designed by Raoul Hafner in 1942 and sponsored by the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment (AFEE), after their Rotachute enjoyed some success, a passive rotor assembly was added over the jeep cabin, along with a lightweight tail, for stabilization.

Around 1940, converted 4WD Minneapolis-Moline tractors, supplied to the U.S. Army as prime movers, were called "jeeps,"[123][124][nb 28] and Halliburton used the name for an electric logging device,[126][125] or for a custom built four wheel drive exploration/survey vehicle.

"[126][124][125] A seven-page article in Popular Science (October 1941) headlined introducing the quarter-ton as "Leaping Lena"—also one of the nicknames of the ubiquitous, same length Ford Model T—and further called it a buggy, or just a bug.

[125] The early 1940s terminology situation is summed up in the definition given in Words of the Fighting Forces by Clinton A. Sanders, a dictionary of military slang published in 1942, in the Pentagon library: "Jeep: A four-wheel drive car of one-half to one-and-one-half-ton capacity for reconnaissance or other army duty.

[141] One other particularly influential article may have been the January 1942 full review of the military's new wonder buggy in Scientific American, reprinted as "Meet the Jeep" in Reader's Digest, the best-selling consumer magazine of the day.

[142] Author Jo Chamberlin was duly impressed by the "midget combat car" and wrote: Our Army's youngest, smallest toughest baby has a dozen pet names such as jeep, peep, blitz-buggy, leaping Lena, panzer-killer.

[citation needed]In a prescient footnote, Chamberlin wrote: "Some army men call the bantam a "peep", reserving "jeep" for the larger command car in which the brass hats ride.

[149][nb 34] Jeeps served as indefatigable pack horses for troop transport and towing supply trailers, carrying water, fuel, and ammunition, and pulling through the most difficult terrain.

They also doubled as mobile field command headquarters or weapons platforms – either with mounted machine guns or pulling small artillery pieces into "unreachable" areas over inhospitable terrain.

[21] Battle-hardened warriors learned to weld a rooftop-height vertical cutter-bar to the front of their jeeps, to cut any trip wires tied across roads or trails by the Germans, placed to snap the necks of unsuspecting jeepers.

This was quickly turned into the M606 jeep (mostly used for export, through 1968) by equipping it with the available heavy-duty options such as larger tires and springs, and by adding black-out lighting, olive drab paint, and a trailer hitch.

The Filipinos stripped down the jeeps to accommodate several passengers, added metal roofs for shade, and decorated the vehicles with vibrant colors and bright chrome hood ornaments.