On 14 January 1954 the first seed was sown which in 60 years would become the flagship of fca. Or rather, not of Fiat, but of the part made in the USA of the group, what in the following decades would become Chrysler. We are talking about the brand Jeep.
That day 66 years ago, in Southfield (Michigan), two car manufacturers - the Nash Kelvinator Corporation , Hudson Motor Car Company – merged giving life to theAmerican Motor Corporation. It was a 198 million dollar operation (about one and a half billion at current prices), the highest value in the history of American mergers up to that moment.
A few years later, in 1970, the company bought Kaiser Jeep, manufacturer of small all-wheel drive off-road vehicles.
In the following period, the drop in sales and the ever-increasing competition on the US market convinced AMC's top management to look for a new partner. So in 1979 the company came to an agreement with the French of Renault, giving rise to an alliance that would however be short-lived.
On March 2, 1987, American Motors Corporation was purchased by Chrysler, which stopped producing the AMC and Renault models for the US market, focusing instead on the other two brands of the incorporated company: Eagle and, especially, Jeep.
The rest is recent history. With the entry in 2009 of Fiat in the capital of Chrysler, which led to the definitive merger in 2014, Jeep entered the orbit of the Turin automotive group. The first car of this new course is the Jeep Cherokee, launched in 2013.
In the following years, the brand became the breakthrough that relaunched the sales of the Italian-American group.
The birth of the Jeep brand is a little different from the content of the article: I understand that Willys-Overland filed the application for registration of the "Jeep" trademark in February 1943 and began to use the name Jeep with the version CJ, acronym of “Civilian Jeep”.
Just 10 years later, in 1953 the Willys was bought by Kaiser, becoming Kaiser-Jeep in 1963.
Kaiser-Jeep was then taken over by American Motors Corporation in 1970.
Good morning. You are right, but the article does not speak of the birth of the Jeep group, but of the birth of the American Motors Corporation, a historical and not very well known merger which proved to be decisive for the destiny of the Jeep brand.