By the fall of 1943, Willys-Overland was no longer simply building military jeeps — it was racing the clock. The company’s wartime success had been extraordinary, but it concealed a dangerous reality: Willys was almost entirely dependent on war production. When the contracts ended, so too might the company’s fortunes.

Sorensen Between Jobs

I have previously written about Charles Sorensen’s departure from Ford and Ward Canaday’s efforts to lure him to Willys. What remains is a great unknown: Why did Sorensen pick Willys over all other possibilities? New research has made me more confident in my speculations—and let me be clear, this is pure speculation, as Sorensen never wrote about this transition.

For the first time in decades, Sorensen had nowhere to go. As one account put it, he did the unthinkable: he went to Florida and sat still. But while physically idle, he was mentally sorting problems and production scales. One thing remained unfinished: The Peace Jeep.

At Ford, Sorensen had overseen wartime jeep production while simultaneously understanding the success of the Ford 9N tractor. This gave him a unique perspective. He saw that the jeep wasn’t just a military surplus vehicle; it was a tool that could be built, marketed, and scaled for a postwar world.

The Ford Connection: I have speculated that Sorensen knew Henry Ford would have no interest in building a postwar jeep. Fred Coldwell, in his book, notes that Willys had worked with the government to make sure it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Ford to build a post-war Jeep. One thing that is not speculative is that Sorensen had great affection for the Ford family. He would not compete against them.

To Sorensen, the Jeep as a “do-everything” machine—a tractor by morning and a truck by afternoon—wasn’t marketing fantasy; it was how industry should work. While in Florida, he wasn’t drifting; he was narrowing his focus for the one last big opportunity.

He wasn’t looking for a job, but the right problem. Willys-Overland had the product, but they lacked the industrial discipline to turn it into something bigger. Sorensen brought both. When he joined Willys in 1944, it wasn’t a retirement undone—it was a continuation. It was one more chance to prove that properly executed production could reshape an entire market. The Florida beach wasn’t an ending; it was a pause between acts.

Enter Sorensen

When Charles E. Sorensen became president in the spring of 1944, he was not stepping into a stable or clearly defined enterprise. Willys-Overland was financially fragile, operationally uneven, and, most critically, undecided about what it wanted to be in the postwar world. It had survived the war on military production, but survival was not a strategy. What Sorensen brought with him was more than experience—it was a disciplined, deeply ingrained production philosophy shaped by years at Ford.

A 1946 Fortune magazine (see the “Dig Deeper section) account makes clear that he immediately framed Willys’ situation as a reconversion problem. In his view, the task was straightforward in concept, if daunting in execution: take a wartime production system, convert it into a civilian product line, and do it faster than anyone else in the industry. Speed was not just a goal—it was the strategy. Under his direction, the civilian Jeep program was accelerated to the point that it reached production readiness within days of V-J Day. That was Sorensen in full form: urgency, decisiveness, and an unwavering focus on getting product out the door.

Central to that push was a decision that came almost immediately and would define the company’s future. Sorensen abandoned any plan to re-enter the conventional passenger car market and instead redirected Willys toward a family of Jeep-based vehicles. The civilian Jeep was only the beginning. It would be joined by a pickup, a station wagon, and a panel delivery—each built from the same core concept, each extending the Jeep’s usefulness into new markets. Period sources make clear that Sorensen saw far greater opportunity in expanding the Jeep idea than in going head-to-head with Detroit’s entrenched giants.

This became the “Utility Line,” and it was more than a product plan—it was a redefinition of the company itself. Sorensen deliberately moved Willys out of the crowded, capital-intensive passenger car field and into a space it could own. Willys would not be a car company, nor a tractor company. It would be something different: a builder of utility vehicles. In hindsight, that strategic pivot was likely the decision that spared Willys from the fate that overtook so many independent automakers in the years immediately following the war.

In the summer of 1944, Sorensen entered Willys’ world with a vision and a plan. He would start with an assessment of not the strategic issues – those were settled for him – but the tactical environment. What had Willys developed so far?

The AgriJeep

Farm Jeep just seems like the proper name for the vehicle that followed the “military jeep” in 1945. It is short and aptly descriptive. Willys-Overland certainly thought it was a great name and had submitted a federal trademark application in 1943. The application was rejected in January 1944 as “being too generic,” and Willys was forced to come up with a new name. That name was “AgriJeep,” and the trademark was granted in December 1944. The “AgriJeep” name would disappear, replaced with the much simpler “Universal Jeep” at the introduction of the CJ2a in 1945. The “Farm Jeep” name didn’t reappear until 1951, when it was introduced as a specific model of the “Universal Jeep.” But to us, a Jeep by any other name is still a Farm Jeep.

The “AgriJeep” (more accurately, the CJ-1 and CJ-2 prototype models) would have been the machine Charles Sorensen found upon his arrival at Willys. Between 1943 and 1944, Willys produced a small number of the “AgriJeep” test machines. They were the physical proof that Willys was serious about beating the sword into a plowshare. Again, Fred Coldwell’s book on the preproduction civilian jeep is the primary source, along with Todd Pasiley’s website. Both are listed in the “Dig Deeper” section. Barney Roos and his crew of engineers had solved many of the long list of engineering issues. However, a major hurdle remained: Willys didn’t have its own hydraulic lift. The development of a lift appears to have been a separate project.

Sometime in 1944, Willys had turned to outside consultant Jabez Love. Love, introduced in Chapter 1, had developed his truck-tractor “Tructor” and later became a Ford Tractor dealer. Love developed 3-point implements and was believed to be working on a 3-point lift for his tractors when Willys approached him. Another unanswered question is how did Willys find Love?

Love was a man who loved publicity. My extensive research on Love relies solely on newspaper clippings, of which there are many. During the war years, Love’s name appears in the newspaper only in the report of a hospital admission in October 1943 (a common practice at the time) and at the time of his father’s death in October 1944. The most important clue about his time at Willys appeared on the social page of his hometown newspaper on December 26, 1944: “… Jabez Love is now filling a responsible position with the Willy(s)-Overland Co. at Toledo, was home with the family for the holiday.”

Because both Sorensen and Love had the Ford 9N in common (although one as a developer and the other as a dealer), I had searched for a connection between the two men. I’ve found none and now believe it is more likely that Roos or someone on his staff somehow knew about Love’s work. Eau Claire, MI is 180 miles from Toledo, and because Love built tractors, not cars or trucks, it is highly unlikely that there was any prior business connection between Love and Willys. I have found no data to establish exactly when Love arrived at Willys in 1944. It may have been before Sorensen’s summer arrival.

Sorensen may have found that the work being done under Barney Roos to develop a hydraulic lift was lacking in some sense, and quickly (again in 1944) brought in his own man. Robert Green, who will play a major role throughout the history of the Farm Jeep, appears again and again in the last half of this book. He was a hydraulic engineer working at Ford’s Willow Run plant.

How Ford and Green came together remains one of the most interesting mysteries of our story. The only connection between Sorensen and Green is that they both worked at Ford. What seems a plausible answer, given that we are speaking of Sorensen, is simple. Sorensen, seeing that he needed a hydraulic engineer, picked up the phone and called a contact at Ford. A simple request, such as “Send me your best hydraulic engineer,” was all that was needed. In any case, Green was soon working with Roos in the engineering department on the lift problem. Or was he?

What We Do & Don’t Know

There are very few facts known about the development of the first hydraulic lift for the Jeep:

1. Jabez Love is credited by Willys as the inventor of the first lift, introduced in 1946 — some 14 months after the introduction of the CJ2a
2. Robert Green immediately (late 1946 into 1947) made several changes to the lift under the Newgren brand. Love adopts most of the changes for his version of the lift he will sell into the 1950s.
3. Green, Love, and Sorensen all seem to have arrived in 1944. (Perhaps this shouldn’t be labeled as “fact,” but as “we have evidence of their arrival.”)

The Unknowns Include:

1. What was going on in the 14 months between the CJ2a’s introduction and the Love lift announcement in September 1946?
2. When did Love start working on the lift design? Was it before his arrival at Willys sometime in 1944?
3. When did Green get involved? In a 1997 interview, Green said he worked under Roos. He did not indicate that he was working on the lift or working with Love.
4. Why did it take 14 months to develop what appeared to be a very simple hydraulic implement lift?

The answers to those questions may never be known. Even if they are answered, they will only be footnotes to the story of the lift. And that lift is what saved the Jeep. It made the Jeep a functioning tractor for the small farm.

Love developed an early concept for a hydraulic lift system adapted to the Jeep platform — placing the components under the frame, introducing the idea that the Jeep could not only pull implements but also actively manage them. It fell to Robert Green to transform Love’s concept into something that addressed serious engineering issues. Green reworked the design, adapting it to the Jeep’s limitations. The result was not a copy of Ford’s three-point hitch, but something distinct — simpler in some respects yet aligned with the same underlying philosophy.

But before the lift could save the Jeep, the “Peace Jeep” had to arrive to a waiting public.

⛏ Dig Deeper: Sources & Further Reading →