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Well a Bantam was a Bantam, it was neither a Willys or a Ford, and was made to filfull an order from the Army regarding such vehicles, and the same order was competed by Willys(MA) and Ford(Pigmy), where Willys won the contract, and the other 2 companies just made about 1500 vehicles to filfull the initial Army order for testing and use in the Russian front before America entered the war(donated the vehicles to Russia).
The Ford Company just made the GPW, and later the GPA' Seep'. Ford got a licence from the Willys company to make the Jeeps after being order by the Army to do so, coz Willys just did not have the capacity to roll out as much vehicles as ford did, and there was already an intense shortage due to the war.
The M38 was the military version of the Cj3A, and the M606 of the Cj3B. The Indian Military Jeep is not a M606 but rather an attempt to militarize a Cj3B by Mahindra.
The Cj5 was made due to a popular demand after people saw and loved the military M38a1.
The M170 was basically a stretched version of the M38A1 used as an ambulance and later a civilian version was also abopted(Cj6).
The M38A1, M606, Cj3b,Cj5,Cj6 were initially made by Willys but around 1955 the company was taken over by Kaiser, which deleted the Willys logo and started embossing Jeep instead.Although there were so many Cj3B willys embossed grills in stock, that it took them about 7-8 years to finish those, and the later ones were just blank, and no, the Indian Willys grills were not a part of those, infact Mahindra started embossing Willys on the grilles(it was embossed wider than the American versions) in about 1957-58 till 1965, after which they embossed Jeep till 1975, by which time they were using something or the other from their American counterparts. Then when they indigenized the jeep in 1976, the grill was blank with a plastic mahindra logo over it. According to my experiance, the best Mahindra chassis were made till !975, till when they were useing American dyes. It was only till then that the distance between the front and rear leafspring mounts were placed at an equal length at both sides, coz later it was quite common to see a difference in length of about a centimeter. Also the American chassis was heavier and had a better material used. Mahindra started degrading the quality so much that by the late 80's, they had to support the chassis by using a long thick strip of metal on the underside of the chassis, right in between the chassis and suspension mounts and stretching from the front suspension mounting point to the rear suspension mounting point.(you can see that under any Classic or other jeeps made after the late 80's).
In the earlier Vehicles,both Ford and Bantam had their own engines and only Willys had the Go-devil engine, but the rest of the drivetrain, including gearbox, transfercase and axles were similar(Spicer and Dana, there were hardly any other suppliers making these parts at the time). Infact during the first trails only Bantam looked quite like what the jeep later came out to look like. Then During the second trails, both Ford and Willys copied the Bantan Design(there were reports that the army shared the Bantam blueprints with both the other companies),and it was now Ford that had the basic shape of what the jeep would look like. It was said the athough the Army liked the overall design of the ford vehicle more, but the Willys engine and chassis combination preformed better. And since the rights to the design belong to the Army, they combined the best features of all of them and awarded the contract to Willys. Bantam, which was already on the brink of bankruptsy, just like Willys was before it was awarded the contract, was awarded the contract to make trailers for the Jeep(Bantam trailers).
All of the earlier jeeps till the M38/Cj3A used the Go-devil engine, and the later versions had what was basically the same engine(Hurricane engine), but with a new F-head with overhead valves,unlike the Side valved L-head Go-devil engine.
None of the Jeeps(WillysMB and FordGPW) were called as such till after WW2, when the G.I's invented this name. The Theory goes that it was named as such after a popular Popeye cortoon where a character called Jeep that could do just about anything. Another theory is that it was invented after they shortened the name for the Ford GPW( the GP from GPW was put together and it formed Geep, which later developed to Jeep).
The last theory is that it was an Acronym for Just.Enough.Essential.Parts, therefore J.E.E.P.
Anyways ,Willys was quick to copyright the name just after the war, before Ford could realize anything. And not that they could do much, even though they could fight for the name taken from their vehicle, but it was basically the licenced version of the Willys itself.
All the Jeeps share the same kind of chassis,even the Willys and Ford design(there were only differences between them, the biggest being the shape of the second ladder of the chissis, which has become to be the easiest way to differentiate between the Ford and the Willys), although the Cj3A/M38, and all the Jeeps after that had an extra ladder in the chassis,which obviously was put there so that the chassis could be made stronger to handle more load, but some beleive the older chassis performed better offroad, due to a missing ladder, coz the chassis was much more flexible. Latter the Cj5 gained one inch of wheelbase than the others, and its military sibling, the M38A1 had reversed front shakels too.
The M38/M38A1 were by far the most vertisile of them all. They had 24Volt electronics and all the lights and switches were waterproofed, the dual batteries(one in the engine bay and the other in the cowl) were in sealed waterproof enclosers,the ignition system(distributer and ignition coil) too was waterproof, and the engine,axles,gerbox,transfer case were all waterproofed and pressureized to ford through about 5 feet of water.
Plenty of M38/M38A1/M170 were captured by the Indian forces buring the wars, and therefore auctioned to the public. Although i have never seen a good example of a M38 in India(almost all have been transfered to Cj3A's or just lost to rust), but i have seen pictures of it with people who used to have them. I am not including Mr.U.B.S's M38 in it coz it was'nt a captured example. It was a American Jeep Used in either Vietnam or Korea, latter donated to a Christern missionary in Burma, from where a missionary brought it to India, and latter it came to be with Mr.U.B.S.
There are a lot of examples of the M38A1 in Bhopal and Hyderabad, but it seems nobody wanted the ugly long wheelbase M170's, so probably they are all but scraped. | 
21st September 2008, 23:58
