5 Of The Biggest Changes Made To Jeeps Over The Last 70 Years (And One Thing That's Stayed The Same)

The Jeep brand originated in World War II when the Army wanted a light-duty off-road vehicle to replace the Ford Model A it had been using in the field. Willys Overland won the competition to build the Army's next battlefield vehicle, and Willys' first civilian Jeep, the CJ-2A, was marketed to construction workers and farmers once the war ended. The CJ line evolved steadily stateside during the Vietnam and Korean Wars and through 1987 when the Wrangler replaced the CJ-7. Along the way, the Jeep brand changed hands several times, passing to Kaiser in 1953, AMC in 1969, and Chrysler in 1987. Jeep is now under the Stellantis umbrella, which acquired Chrysler and all its brands in 2021.

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While the Wrangler remains the most identifiable Jeep model, the Jeep lineup has expanded to include a wide range of SUVs like the Cherokee, Wagoneer, Renegade, and Compass. While the introduction of new models is the most obvious change to the Jeep brand, even the signature model, the Wrangler, has seen some substantial changes from its birth during the Reagan administration, let alone its military-inspired CJ origins.

Yet despite all these significant ways Jeeps have evolved in the past seven decades, in one respect, the current crop of Jeeps produced by Stellantis is fundamentally similar to the models produced by Willys Overland during the Korean War era. Let's start with five of the major changes.