Since their birth before the Second World War, the Jeep name and vehicle have seen a lot of evolution. The US military saw the original need for a vehicle such as the Jeep, as it was looking for a vehicle to serve many functions in the war. After wading through the military’s list of requirements, which included a budget, Willys-Overland won the bid, took over manufacturing responsibilities, and gave us one of the most well-known vehicles to date. Let’s look at the companies that have manufactured Jeeps throughout the years!
Willys-Overland, 1941–1963
The origin of Jeep’s name has been a topic of debate for many decades. But we know for certain that the birth parent of the Jeep vehicle was Willys-Overland. Another interesting fact about the Jeep’s birth is that Willys delivered its prototype to the military in only 2 days.
Kaiser Jeep, 1963–1970
After Willys’s long-standing run with the original Jeep, Kaiser-Frazer purchased the company for $62 million. Willys-Overland merged with Kaiser and continued the production of Jeeps for war use and consumer markets. Eventually, Kaiser phased out all the other vehicles it was producing and shifted its focus solely to the Jeep name. During this transition, it dropped the Willys name altogether and became the Kaiser Jeep International Corporation.
American Motors Corporation, 1970–1987
American Motors came to Kaiser-Jeep to purchase the company outright, and this led Kaiser to halt all its business dealings and close. Shortly after the purchase, however, AMC lost staggering sums of money: it lost nearly $73 million between 1974 and 1976. But in 1977, it sold a historic high of 124,843 Jeeps in the United States alone. A French company known as Renault then merged with AMC in 1979 to help them along.
Chrysler, 1987–1998
Chrysler handed over a hefty purchase price—$1.5 billion—for Jeep production in 1987. At this time, the worth of Jeep alone was around $850 million. In 1993, Chrysler manufactured and released one of the most significant models in the Jeep line, the Grand Cherokee. For the first time in the brand’s history, sales topped 400,000 in the US.
The SUV-hungry United States remained consistent in its hunt for Jeeps, and Daimler bought Chrysler for $36 billion. Daimler then made a hasty decision to sell to Cerberus Capital, which had no auto manufacturing experience and ended in bankruptcy.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, 2009–Today
Thanks in large part to the government, Fiat became the most recent company to have manufactured Jeeps and rescued the bankrupt Chrysler from ruin to save the production of the Jeep. Sales of other vehicles manufactured by the automaker declined, but Jeep sales continued to rise, nearly doubling by 2016 to almost 1,000,000 units in the US and 1.4 million globally.
