Unfurling the Myth of the $50 ‘Jeep-in-a-Box:’ Throwback Thursday Presented by the All-New Nitto Recon Grappler™ A/T

It’s been 75 years down the line and yet nobody can prove that any $50 surplus Jeep-in-a-box sets were ever sold.

There’s an old Jeep story that stretches way back to the late 1940s and early ‘50s. Back to that boom time just after World War II. It’s based on fact. But there has never been any proof that anyone ever actually bought surplus WWII Jeeps in a Box as advertised for just $50 in several magazines at the time.

This week’s “Throwback Thursday” Presented By Nitto is a story that simply refuses to go away. Even if it still seems more a myth than something that actually went down.

Unboxing a Myth that Refuses to Die. Again!

Military Trader has unpacked the tale yet again. Those old Popular Science, Boy’s Life and other magazine advertisements certainly were real. They were even backed up by a 1945 Popular Science campaign encouraging a surplus market. It asked readers for ideas how they’d utilize surplus military goods. Suggestions included using Jeeps as tractors, power generators and pick–up trucks.

But there exists absolutely no evidence at all that anyone actually went out and bought one of those $50 Jeeps in a Box. Intrigued by the prospect, entrepreneurs have over time offered substantial sums to reward anyone who can prove they bought — or even know of anyone who bought an original Jeep in a crate. None of that money has never changed hands. So who knows of anyone who has acquired such a thing, 75 years later.

The Jeep story is unique. Built to an army specification for a super-tough vehicle to carry heavy loads, pull bulky objects and move quickly over rough terrain, Ford and Willys built 648,000 of them for shipment to support US forces through World War II. Jeeps accounted for 15 percent of all military vehicles produced. About 145 of them were assigned to each infantry regiment.

Approximately 70% of Wartime Jeeps Were Crated

It is said that 70 percent of wartime Jeep production out of the Ford Motor Company’s Richmond, California plant was crated for dispatch to the front. That, together with those adverts, adds plausibility to the availability of post-war surplus sales of boxed Jeeps.

But while Jeeps were indeed crated and shipped by the hundred-thousand, warehoused and plausibly even sold as surplus for a while after the war, the likelihood of some secret store packed full Willys MB or Ford GPW Jeeps, giant balloons, mine detectors, flares, naval deck cannons or bugles, is as likely as finding fresh unicorn spoor in the Grand Canyon. Most Jeep buffs know that full well, and there’s very good reason for that skepticism.

See, at the height of the previous “Jeep-in-a-Crate” speculation, Jack Beckett wrote that, “It was a scam,” in his March 2018 article on War History Online. “They distributed pamphlets with information on how to bid at auctions, even though the same info was available from the government for free,” he wrote. Beckett also highlights that even if they were sold, only a handful of them were even complete.

“Most were scrapped, leaving only spare parts available.”