Willys Aero Saga: An Afterlife in Rio

In the first few years after World War II, Willys Overland, which had produced many of the Jeeps which helped turn the tide of war*, was searching for another vehicle which would have enough appeal to take the place of government orders for the Jeep. They introduced an all-steel station wagon with Jeep-like styling in 1946, and the Jeepster convertible in 1948.  The wagon was a modest success, and continued to be produced until 1964, ten years after Willys Overland merged with Kaiser.  The Jeepster was not a great hit, and was discontinued after the 1950 model year. Some suggested that the Jeepster may have reminded returning GIs too much of the wartime Jeep...

Willys identified a market need for a practical, efficient car that would plug the yawning gap between the tiny Crosley and the "full-size" cars from the Big Three.  Nash would introduce its Rambler in 1950 and would soon add a wagon and sedan to the original ragtop.  In 1951, Nash would produce 57,555 of what it would later christen as the compact car. Possibly encouraged by the Nash example, two Packard alumni, engineer Clyde Patton and designer Phil Wright, finished the Willys entry in the field.

It was a predictive effort in many ways. First, there was the unitized body construction, an approach that would be adopted by the Big Three compacts in 1960. The wheelbase was a tidy 108 inches, 8 inches longer than the Rambler and also echoed by the later Valiant, Falcon and Corvair.  Even the engines were interesting; Willys offered new F-head versions of their inline 6 and 4. This head design, also called Inlet Over Exhaust and similar to a design used by Rover as well as Rolls Royce, positioned intake valves in the head and exhaust valves at the side, permitting larger intake valves than the previous flathead design, and more efficient combustion. Willys called their F-head the Hurricane. Owing to the light weight of the Aero, it had, early in its career anyway, the best power to weight ratio of any American car. 

By 1953 Willys made both two and four-door sedans, as well as a pillarless two-door hardtop, and over its production run offered various trim options from the Ace (the top of the line) to the Wing, and also a Lark, Eagle and Falcon.  Obviously, other manufacturers were aware of the pioneering Willys, even when it came to naming their cars. This two-tone green sedan is a 1953 Aero Ace...

The shape of the roof and glass area anticipates the Volvo 122 (Amazon) from the late Fifties. The fins were a bit less tentative than the bumps on early Fifties Caddies, but nothing like the ones that Virgil Exner would release on Chrysler's '57 Forward Look.

Willys sold over 42,000 of its Aero in 1953, bettering the first year by over 10,000 cars. The model's future was cut short, however, by the 1954 merger between Willys and struggling Kaiser, perhaps prompted by Henry Kaiser's interest in the Jeep line and related government contracts...

The '54 model offered few external changes beyond the chrome headlight hoods shown above, and an extra engine option. After the possibly unwise merger with Kaiser, Willys offered the bigger, but less efficient, Continental six from the Kaiser line in the Aero. Kaiser, on the other hand, offered the F-head Willys engine in its fiberglass-bodied Darrin 2-seater. The Kaiser-Willys combine restyled the car for 1955, with a wider grille and zigzag trim typical for the period.  The two-door hardtop station wagon sketched out by the design staff might have been a better choice. In any case, the firm wound down production after '55, along with the larger Kaiser, after making nearly 6,600 of the final Aero model shown below.

After over 91,000 had been sold in the US, the compact Willys found new life south of the border in 1960, when Kaiser Willys began producing the original design in Brazil.  The Aero 2600, as it was called, looked mostly like the '55 shown above until a clever 1961 restyling by Brooks Stevens, who also redesigned the Studebaker Hawk for 1962 (with similar T-Bird inspired roofline) and the Studebaker Lark line from 1962 through 1964. The Willys redesign went into production in 1963 and was a success, and the car stayed in production until 1971.  

That coincided with the first seven years of the military junta that took over in 1964.  You probably didn't want one of these (usually in black) to show up outside your house in the wee hours of  the morning during that period...unless it happened to be your car.  There was also a limousine version, shown below, which was mostly reserved for Brazilian officialdom and business leaders. Of all the independent US car manufacturers, Willys had perhaps the most enduring product lines. After all, the Jeep wagon anticipated the modern SUV (Kaiser's 1963 ohc Jeep Wagoneer, also designed by Brooks Stevens, refined the idea), and Jeeps kept Kaiser's vehicle production lines busy through 1969, after which American Motors took over...until 1987, when Chrysler purchased the AMC car operation, including Eagle (remember that?) and Jeep. Eagle lasted only a short while, but the familiar Jeep face is still easily recognized in Chrysler showrooms and on the road.

Postscript:  Meanwhile, several vintage Willys Overland vehicles are in use in Boulder, Colorado, where the Jeepster and pristine '53 Aero Ace were spotted, along with the well-loved Aero below which is still in regular use by a lady almost a quarter century older than the car...

*Footnote:  The Jeep design was a product of Pennsylvania's American Bantam Company (American Austin until 1934) which produced an American version of the British Austin Seven from 1930 to '41. Owing to concerns about Bantam's production capacity, the US Government reopened the contract after Bantam had made nearly 2,700 of the first Jeeps, and production was divided between Willys and Ford, while Bantam produced the T-3 trailer for Jeeps.

Photo Credits:  
Top & 2nd (Jeepster):  the author
3rd: Willys Overland
4th thru 6th from top:  the author 
7th:  Willys Overland
8th: howstuffworks.com
9th & 10th: wikimedia
11th: Willys Overland do Brasil SA
12th: flickr.com
Bottom:  Isaac Stokes.  Special thanks to Isaac for finding a shot from our months-ago dog
walk, and for asking his loyal retriever to provide a bit of scale.