Pink Jeep Surrey Gala is a Swingin’ Sixties Sensation
If you took a tropical vacation during the Mad Men era, you might have been lucky enough to get a ride in a Surrey Gala like this 1960 beauty.
There’s more than one way to have fun in a Jeep. You don’t have to bomb down a backwoods trail covered in mud or scramble up rocks to enjoy the Jeep lifestyle. Some of them are fun just cruising around town running errands. Some, like this one offered at Barret-Jackson’s upcoming Palm Beach 2018 sale, look fun even sitting still.
The Jeep Surrey Gala, based off of the DJ-3A two-wheel-drive postal service Jeep, was a far cry from its drab, utilitarian military predecessor. With candy-striped seats, a fringed top, and a pastel color palette straight out of an Easter basket, it’s clear that the Surrey Gala had no business on the trail.
Instead, the Surrey Gala’s intended purpose was inexpensive transport for hotels and resorts in Hawaii and the Caribbean. We can certainly see how the Surrey Gala’s looks would add to the aesthetic of a tropical resort.
If it sounds like an impossibly narrow market segment, you’d be right. Roughly 1,100 were produced from 1959 through 1964. When the DJ-3A was replaced by the DJ-5, there was no new Surrey Gala offered in the lineup.
Like the DeLorean several decades later, this Jeep’s unique looks made it a natural for the silver screen. Surrey Galas can be seen in many films, including Elvis Presley’s Fun in Acapulco from 1963.
Apparently, the pink Surrey Gala featured in the film — identical to this one offered at auction — was Elvis’ personal car after his discharge from the U.S. Army. That particular Jeep is still on display at his home in Graceland, fitting in nicely with the pink Cadillacs he was legendarily so fond of.
To Elvis, a generation of moviegoers, and well-heeled vacationers in the early 1960s, the Jeep Surrey Gala is forever associated with the glitz and glamour of that jet-setting era. That’s not something you can say about many Jeeps.
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