Mystery Cars: The Bantam Army Jeep

[@TomSteiner-n5h]

Some people will argue all day but the Bantam Motor Co. was the orginal designer and builder of the first one and only Jeep type vehicle. The government handed over the designs to Willys and Ford which they copied, making a few changes along the way. Granted, Bantam was a very small company with limited resources and couldn't meet the demand they in my mind were the pioneer Jeep builder.

[@frankpetrone2966]

Great little vehicle from a small American company! Too bad it didn’t survive in the ‘50s and beyond.

[@tomford5416]

ive driven a BRC40 its kinda flimsy but eager

[@arby5780]

Great story, the guy at Heinz was enthusiastic and mostly accurate! It was Camp Holabird btw. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Holabird?wprov=sfla1

[@billkircher2310]

No the CEO of Heinz did not tell an accurate story. At no time did Bantam have issues meeting Army deadlines for production. Bantam built the Pilot Jeep which was tested in September/October 1940. Then Bantam got the contract to built 70 more Jeeps (BRC60 version) in December 1940. Bantam also developed an agreement with Checker Cab in Jan 1941 to build out more Jeeps if the Uncle Sam give them a big contract. Instead, Uncle Sam gave Willys, Ford and Bantam a 1500 unit order each in 1941 despite Willys and Ford not having a successful testing vehicle. Jeep trials in June/July 1941 resulted in a huge contract to Willys and Ford. What was interesting was the Russian observers at the Jeep trials picked the Banatm and received 1000 Bantam Jeeps for WW2.