Sunday, July 17, 2016
Happy 75, Jeep!
Polistra in her Bantam (Jeep's mom) and Happystar in an original Jeep salute Jeep on its 75th birthday.
The anniversary is in November, but I really wanted to mark a corporate decision by Chrysler to EXPAND the Willys plant. While other parts of the US auto industry are failing or moving overseas, the Willys plant in Toledo just keeps going and slowly growing.
Both the car and the company are remarkably patient. The car's external design has remained recognizable, with only gradual changes, since 1941. Nothing else matches it. VW lost this race a long time ago. The internal configuration preserved a good 1933 setup through dozens of fashionable changes by other carmakers. When others were finally ready to return to sanity, Willys showed the way.
The company is remarkable in a different way. Most mergers fail, and many mergers involve 'poison pills' in one direction or the other. The company being swallowed forces the swallower to pay more than it should, or more commonly the swallower loads down the prey with lethal debt. Willys is the opposite: a vitamin pill. It has been swallowed four times (cumulatively, like the old fishy foodchain cartoon), and each time it SAVED the outermost swallower from failure.
Jeep even rescued a piece of Studebaker. In '64 when the Studie corporate structure collapsed, a separate defense-contract plant in South Bend was still working on active contracts. Kaiser, the current holder of Willys, bought the plant and continued the contracts. Kaiser then used the plant for its own Jeep-based gummint work. When AMC bought Kaiser in '70, it continued running the old Studie plant, making post office Jeeps, buses, and Humvees. The plant is still running under the name AM General, no longer connected to any auto company.
Happy birthday, patient vitamin Jeep!
Polistra in her Bantam (Jeep's mom) and Happystar in an original Jeep salute Jeep on its 75th birthday.
The anniversary is in November, but I really wanted to mark a corporate decision by Chrysler to EXPAND the Willys plant. While other parts of the US auto industry are failing or moving overseas, the Willys plant in Toledo just keeps going and slowly growing.
Both the car and the company are remarkably patient. The car's external design has remained recognizable, with only gradual changes, since 1941. Nothing else matches it. VW lost this race a long time ago. The internal configuration preserved a good 1933 setup through dozens of fashionable changes by other carmakers. When others were finally ready to return to sanity, Willys showed the way.
The company is remarkable in a different way. Most mergers fail, and many mergers involve 'poison pills' in one direction or the other. The company being swallowed forces the swallower to pay more than it should, or more commonly the swallower loads down the prey with lethal debt. Willys is the opposite: a vitamin pill. It has been swallowed four times (cumulatively, like the old fishy foodchain cartoon), and each time it SAVED the outermost swallower from failure.
Jeep even rescued a piece of Studebaker. In '64 when the Studie corporate structure collapsed, a separate defense-contract plant in South Bend was still working on active contracts. Kaiser, the current holder of Willys, bought the plant and continued the contracts. Kaiser then used the plant for its own Jeep-based gummint work. When AMC bought Kaiser in '70, it continued running the old Studie plant, making post office Jeeps, buses, and Humvees. The plant is still running under the name AM General, no longer connected to any auto company.
Happy birthday, patient vitamin Jeep!Labels: defensible spaces
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